Equivalent of ISNUMBER for a date (XP)

[NorthernMike]

I am using =LEFT in B1 to isolate the 1st 8 characters of A1. In C1 I want to test whether B1 is a date. If it is a date, I want to include the status in an IF statement. I've tried ISNUMBER but it returns false. I guess there is no equivalent function for a date. Is there a formula that will accomplish this?

[sdckapr]

What are you trying to test exactly?

A date is any number from 0 to 2,958,465 that is formatted as a date. If you to test if it is formatted as a date, it will require a user function. Excel "proper" does not distinguish between the number 38,450 and the date April 8, 2005. The values are equivalent in every way. The only difference is the display.

Steve

[NorthernMike]

Steve, Column A contains could contain text such as 03/11/05 to 03/12/05 or a description such as xyz. I want to extract the from and to dates and put them into separate coumns and then format them as dates.

[HansV]

The following formula will return TRUE if the first 8 characters in A1 form a date, FALSE otherwise:

=NOT(ISERROR(DATEVALUE(LEFT(A1,8))))