PDF to Excel- internal data errors

Question

We have Acrobat XI and we converted a PDF document to Excel. It looked like it worked properly. However, we discovered when trying to sort the date field, that some of the dates became corrupted in Excel . It affected   the stored values of the dates, not what you see on the worksheet. For example, 1/1/12 became 1-12-2001; 2/1/12 became 1-12-2002. So obviously when we tried to sort on the date field, our results did not look correct. Please note that not every date field is corrupted. Many  of them are fine..
We tried testing to see if the date fields were text, but they are not.  We tried changing cell formats. We tried going into Excel Options and checking "precision as displayed"
We had 2 users in different departments try it and got the same results.

Answer 1

This is not an Adobe Reader problem; it may not even be an Acrobat (or Excel problem).
The problem is ambiguous date formats; what does 1/1/12 really mean?  Computers and software do not have much ability to compare an ambiguous date with surrounding dates that are more obvious.
The best solution is to use clear date formats like 2012-01-01 or 2012/01/01.
Another possibility is to check if Acrobat can be made to change or identify the date format before the conversion.  For this you best ask in the Acrobat forum.