Changing date entries from dd/mm/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy

Hi,

I am having a problem with the way excel computes dates. Excel uses a standard format of month/day/year in its computations. We have extracted data from a database with dates and time in this format "day/month/year hour:minute:second AM/PM" (example: 11/8/2008 9:13:59 PM). This is August 11, 2008 9:13:59 PM but excel interprets this as November 8, 2008 9:13:59 PM. When we perform date operations to get the difference between 2 dates, it returns an incorrect answer.

Is there a way to make excel interpret 11/8/2008 9:13:59 PM as August 11, 2008 9:13:59 PM and not November 8, 2008 9:13:59 PM? Or maybe a macro that automatically switches the day and month entries?

Please help. We've been manually changing the day and month entries for a week now.

change your date format in control panel/regional settings to uk or anywhere that uses day/month/year format, then excel will interpret dates in that format,

Is there any other way that does not change any setting in the computer? It's just that we do not have the rights to change the time settings in our office computer.