With the advice given earlier, I have found several methods that do what I need to get done with no problems. My previous lack of knowledge was easily corrected and I am confident in my ability to adapt the input to conform to the requirements of its intended function. Quote: [With US loale setting and "detect special numbers" any of the above input strings yield cell value 41274 preformatted to show 41274 as "12/31/12" which is obviously and unambiguously the correct value. This value can be formatted at will and sorted by its numeric value.] You are correct in that 12/31/12 is not ambiguous, but that is a special case. When each element is unique and without knowing the source preference, there are six different dates that may be generated from "10/11/12": 2010-11-12 2010-12-11 2011-10-12 2011-12-10 2012-10-11 2012-11-10 This is why, when not using ISO8601, I choose to use a four digit year AND a month name. No matter the order of the elements, there can be no ambiguity. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Date-will-not-format-or-sort-when-imported-into-calc-ods-tp4004907p4006430.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted