Converting non-standard date field to standardized date format

[TheDougmeister]

Hi.

I must be missing something really obvious here.

I have a non-standard date in cell A1 (formatted as "General") that looks like this: Apr 10, 1839.

I have about a hundred rows and tried to sort by "Date", but it did not work. I figured it was because they were formatted as "General" cells.

So I broke them up into different cells:
B1: 1839
C1: Apr
D1: 10

Then, in E1, I put this formula:

=DATE(B1,C1,D1)

But that gives me the old "#VALUE!" error.

What am I missing? Thanks.

 

[Fluff]

Excel doesn't recognise dates before the 1st Jan 1900