Excel 2007 : Problem with text to column and dates

Hello - I am working with a database of cemetery info. I have names and dates. I am splitting the names into first name, last name. However, some of the names have middle initials, Jr., Sr., whatever and so those go into more columns than I need and I manually put them back in.

For example,
Earll, Joe E., Jr.

I set comma as the delimiter and I get three new columns instead of two. Also, this creates a space before Joe in the second column. I have gotten around that by doing a trim.

However, my biggest problem is the dates.
Jan 8 1955 - July 8 1989

Isn't recognized as a date b/c there's no comma

Jan. 8, 1955

Isn't recognized as a date b/c there's a period.

Jan 1955 - Dec 1955

Isn't recognized b/c there's no day.


And I can't even put all the numbers as dates b/c some are years that were stored as text.
I'm attaching the document to make it clearer, but this is just taking me way too long since I have many of these to do.

Oh yeah, and I have some 1800 dates and it doesn't recognize those. I downloaded the add-in but it doesn't seem to be working.

As always, your help is much appreciated.