title: Excel doesn't recognize dates
body: <p>I discovered a strange problem when trying to run a macro.</p>
  
  <p>In my sheet I have a column that I copied from another sheet with dates like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>|     D      | 
  |15/01/2013  |
  |20/01/2013  |
  |01/02/2013  |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All the cells in this column are in the "Date" type with a "dd/mm/yyyy" format.</p>
  
  <p>If with a macro I want to compare the year of each dates on by one it will work, for example if I do:</p>
  
  <p><code>Year(Range("D1").Value)=Year(Range("D2").Value)</code> it returns a True statement</p>
  
  <p>But if I try to compare the dates themselves it won't work.</p>
  
  <p>For example if I try to do: </p>
  
  <p><code>Range("D1").Value &lt;= Range("D2").Value</code> it will return a False statement.</p>
  
  <p>But I found something strange, if I manually go into the formula bar of D2 for example, I click on it, then I press enter and now my column looks like this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>|     D      | 
  |15/01/2013  |
  |  20/01/2013|
  |01/02/2013  |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And if I do this for all the values in my column then</p>
  
  <p><code>Range("D1").Value &lt;= Range("D2").Value</code> will return a True statement.</p>
  
  <p>Can someone explains me why is Excel doing this and how I can automatically have the exploitable date in my column because I won't manually change 500 rows.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>