Excel displaying unwanted date data

I have an array of date data as shown:

dates=

'12/23/2011'

'12/23/2011'

'12/23/2011'

'12/23/2011'

'12/23/2011'

I want to find out how many values of date data I have and write it into excel, so I have this code:

num=1:length(dates);

num=num’;

xlswrite(‘file_1.xls’, num, ‘sheet1’, ‘A1’)

xlswrite(‘file_1.xls’, dates, ‘sheet1’, ‘B1’)

The dates end up being displayed in excel fine but the array of 1 to fine labeled "num" displays an array in excel that looks like this: 1/1/1900

1/2/1900

1/3/1900

1/4/1900

1/5/1900

Does anyone know how I would fix this?

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

Excel is interpreting those cells as dates (e.g. one day from the start of 1-Jan-1900, etc.). Go into Excel and change the format of those cells from "date" to "number".