Pivot Table Date Format/Sort

I'm having a problem with several Pivot Tables that is driving me up the wall. I have read similar posts but no solutions that work for me.

I have a Pivot Table with source data in a SQL Server Database. Some of the columns are dates formatted mm/dd/yyyy (ex. 01/01/2007). No blanks, nulls, or other data in the columns.

Excel thinks these are text, so I can't sort or filter correctly by date.

How can I make Excel recognize these as dates. Is there somewhere in the import process where I can do this? Do they need to be in a different format for Excel to recognize them?

I want Excel to automatically recognize these dates on import.

I had a similar problem. I got round it by importing the data first to an excel spreadsheet, and yes, the dates are texts. So I created a helper column that converted text to date, and then used pivot tables.

=value(a1) and format the cell dd mmm yy or whatever you want.

Another way :

Input "1" ( without quotes) in a cell somewhere - copy this cell
Select the range you want to work on
Right-click
Paste special
Check " multiply"
OK
You text has now become numbers which you can format as dates

I tried this and Excel said I could not move a pivot table or insert cells, rows, or columns.