I have noticed something peculiar. I am not sure if this is because of any particular settings, but when I save a date value in the dd/mm/yyyy format in a CSV file and then read this CSV file using Excel, the value does not get recognized as a date value. It get recognized as a string.

The example data in the CSV file is:
ID,START_DATE
1234,08/12/2011
5678,21/12/2011

Now if I load this data using Excel, the date on the second row shows up as text. I understand that it gets picked up as a date because, when I use filter, and then expand the drop-down on the START_DATE column, I see that the first START_DATE is organized as the tree structure. But the second START_DATE is not.

I also found out that the date is read as mm/dd/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yyyy.

One other thing I found out is, when I set the date of the second START_DATE as 12 instead of 22, Excel identifies it as a date value rather than a string value.

Can someone help me with this? I need to send data in the dd/mm/yyyy date format inside a CSV file and when the destination user opens the file, the date values are all mis-interpreted.