Excel datetime functions are garbage. you have to explicitly, manually tell it not to format things as dates, the most destructive data type, but it doesn't act that way for other formats (e.g., $ doesn't turn things into accounting format).
That said: every datetime function I've ever written is also garbage so... glass houses, I guess?
Which is exactly why feeding all your input into a trash input parsing function by default is a horrible idea. If dates handling was just 1 extra button you click, the problem wouldn't exist. Overzealous default behavior, the #1 sin of Microsoft.
That said: every datetime function I've ever written is also garbage so... glass houses, I guess?