Using Left function, returning numbers rather than text

[Badnames]

I'm using the left function and want the formula to return the following as text. However, the formula is returning numbers. Not quite sure how it is getting these numbers either. Here is an example using cell C3 value and the number returned.

C3 = 5/14/2014 2:50:26 PM

my formula:

=left(c3,4)

returns:

4177


Is this right? I was trying to get the answer to come out as 5/14

 

[Badnames]

Joe yes I did and it worked great! I was just letting scotty know that I had tried formatting before the formulas.

I understood that excel stored dates actually as numbers, what I had not realized is that excel was reading the number in the left formula (i.e 4xxxxx). I thought for some reason it was converting the "5/14" to the number.

The conversion to the string did what I needed. Also used VoGs method and it worked great as well. Learned two new ways to tackle the same problem.