formatting date time as 01/01/2015 in excel 2003

Question

If I enter 01/01/2015 into an Excel column it gets translated into 1/1/2015. I right click and click on Format Cells... and see that the format is *3/14/2001.

I have some other cells in this spreadsheet that say 01/01/2015 and right clicking on those shows the format to be 03/14/2001. Problem is... that's only for existing cells. On new cells 03/14/2001 doesn't even appear as a format that I can select.

Is there a way to make new cells in a particular column use the format 03/14/2001 such that 01/01/2015 stays as 01/01/2015?

Answer 1

Format it as mm/dd/yyyy under "Custom". That will force the leading zero for day and month.