I use the following code to populate a date field on a sheet right now
ws.Range("E7").Value = Format(DateSerial(CInt(Left(raceDate, 4)), CInt(Mid(raceDate, 5, 2)), CInt(Right(raceDate, 2))), "Long Date")
raceDate is a string...so for example if its value was "20141101" the output I'd get would...