Hi All,
This is my first time posting here, but I really would like to seek a guru who might be able to help me.

I have 3 columns that tell me the date of the record. Which is great when I just want to sort my month. However if I want to use excel timelines or manipulate the date, then I need to somehow create a date column as Excel doesn't see the 3 columns as a date field

YEAR MONTH DAY
2015 8 9
2015 7 8

Therefore, with me trying to be clever, I create a new column and CONCATENATE the data
E.g.
=CONCATENATE(F4,"/",E4,"/",D4)

I get the following result:

9/8/2015
8/7/2015


HOWEVER - my problem. Excel doesn't recognise the change when I "format cell", and change the category from "general" to "date." **

What am I doing wrong... is there an easier way of
A) - getting Excel to recognise 3 separate columns combined as a date format?
B) - getting my CONCATENATE data category to be recognised as a date format by Excel.

** I also tried to copy the CONCATENATE data and just paste value without success.

Please also note I will continue to receive data in this 3 column date format every week with a few thousand lines of data, so I am also looking at a method of how to convert this going forward.


Your help, suggestions, guidance will be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Peter