Hi Pecoflyer.
Thanks so much for your suggestions ! I have to say that I had 'mixed' results. I tried it on 3 different spreadsheets, 2 of which were slightly different , and 1 backup.

The first 2 I tried showed no change, but the 3rd one did ! All the dates on that one displayed as they should......and also imported correctly after conversion to Ical format.
So thanks a million. No idea why 1 worked and not the others.

It would be easy to say that 'Computing is not an exact science'.......but I believe that it is ! [That's only for the customers ]!

On the other hand, there are many things that can make a difference, such as memory usage, what else is open, mistyping etc etc.

But the bottom line is that I got what I needed, so thanks so much. You are a star ! Not least, for bothering to reply to my cry for help.

Cheers for now.
S-M