A problem has been identified with dates and the Excel hold file format. When fields defined as 'Smart Dates' are downloaded using the Excel format, they are imported into Excel as numeric or alpha data and the cells cannot be formatted to display as a date.
For example, 01/15/2001 will download as '1152001' and cannot be changed to display as 'January 15, 2001'.
For this reason, we advise using the LOTUS or TABT format when downloading data that contains date fields.