Making date format two digits for month/two digits for day/four for the year - so hard!?

Hey all,

I'm pulling my hair out over this. All I want to do is make my date format two digits for month/two for day/four for the year, and yet Excel seems determined to make this impossible for me. Here is my sheet. If you look in C2 you see I have 3/14/2012 type selected as the format. One would think that because the example has two digits for the day that it'd be possible to add a zero before numbers under 10, but this isn't the case. In C2 if you try to add a 0 before the 9 the 0 disappears. I've tried tons of other date formats, can't get it to work. Tried making the format general, but that removes the date altogether and converts it into some odd numbers. Can anyone help? Sorry for such a basic question.

Try to "Custom Format" the cells to mm:dd:yyyy, it should work.

I love this forum. You guys rock. Got it with the custom format. I didn't know you could type your own format in that. Nice! Thank you! thank you!