Date field exported in wrong cell format, adds a leading apostrophe in excel

I have a date field in a view. The exported file (xls or xlsx it doesn't matter) adds a hidden apostrophe in the beginning of every cell ('08/07/2011) which can be seen only on the input line. This leads to wrong column sorting. The cell format is Number instead of Date and this probably causes the problem.

I know this is a well known issue on date cells on excel. There is a workaround to remove the apostrophes from the whole column, but I want to have the cells without it from the beginning. Is there any way to do this? Maybe by formatting the column before the export? Has anyone had a similar problem and came up with a solution?

Thanks.