Just Can't Get It!!

Question

Ok, this is day 4 of trying to figure this out and I know I am so close, but I am just missing something really simple in manipulating the input such that I get the output into a date in the form of MM/dd/yyyy.
I Have a JTextField text
I have a JButton enter
Under the code below, when I enter:
12122001 in the JTextField
click enter (JButton)
the 12122001 changes to DEcember 12, 2001 00:00:00 utc (or close to that)
When what I really want is for it to change to and output 12/12/2001 (within the same textField).
Iit is actually changing within the same JTextField, which is what I want , just in the wrong format. At what stage and how in the code do I specify the format that I want the changed to text to come out as?
I have gone over the API a hundred times and tried changing the string to a StringBuffer, format(), dateFormat, getDateInstance(), Date, If it is in the API I tried it and done so in various combinations. I am sure I am just missing something small, Could someone please help!!!!!
Thanks alot as always, Oz.
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){
          if((e.getSource() == text) || (e.getSource() == enter)){
               String text1 = text.getText();
               SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat();
          try{
               sdf.setLenient(true);
               Date formattedDate = sdf.parse(text1);
               text.setText(formattedDate.toString());
               catch(ParseException pe){
               text.setText("bad Date");
          }

Answer 1

I've tried to manipulate what you said below a number of different ways, but can't seem to figure it out. The original way will suffice for what I want, but it would really help my understanding of how to further manipulte the code if you could just help one last time, I am soooo close I can taste it!!!
This is what I am thinking based on what you mentioned!
Thanks for your patience! Oz.
String text1 = text.getText();
               SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MMddyyyy");
               SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy");
          try{
               sdf.setLenient(false);
               df.setLenient(false);
               Date formattedDate = sdf.parse(text1);
               df.applyPattern("MM/dd/yyyy");          
               text.setText(df.format(formattedDate));