[Suzanne]

Over an hour spent on this stupid...

I've changed all my Excel date formats to a specified "Date" format:
"dd-mmm-yyyy" (vice "Custom: yyyyMMMdd") (didn't help)

I've opened my Excel spreadsheet as the data source (not working)

I've opened using "Connect to new data source.odc" as the data source (not
working)

I re-opened (refreshed) the data source after changing the Excel spreadsheet
(not working)

I've spent considerable time looking at old posts (not helping as of yet)

I'm testing dates on a plain page -- the only thing on the page are the
following mergefield codes -- which are consistently resulting as "39375"

{MERGEFIELD "STARTDATE"}
{MERGEFIELD "STARTDATE" \@ "dd-mmm-yyyy"}

What do I need to do to get my date to show up as 20-Oct-2007 (or better
yet, "20071020")?

BTW, telling me to update a service pack won't do me any good -- I'm on a
system which, for the most part, is locked down by administrators (I assume
they have already installed all the service packs anyway)