Excel formel

so any of the following should work:

=AL2

=$AL$2

=$AL2

=AL$2

when you say it didn't work, did you by chance get some weird number?  because a DATE is actually a number representing the number of days after a start/zero date.  If that is/was the case, you just need to change the format of those cells to be Date or under more options you can choose a more specific Date format.

Another alternative is to NAME that AL2 cell.  click on the AL2 cell then on the AL2 label shown above the list of row numbers and to the left of the formula bar.  After highlighting that AL2 there, type a 'name' for that cell (e.g. 'MyDate'.  just make sure it isn't a cell reference like D1 or DD1234 and doesn't use illegal characters or spaces).  Alternatively you can click Formulas -> Name Manager -> New and then enter a name in the name box and in the Refers to box you can enter =$AL$2 (or if the cell was already highlighted it will pre-populate the reference).  Then your formula will be:

=MyDate

or whatever you named that cell