You mention you are having problems getting the dates to arrange in date order - So you want the HEADINGS Sorted by Date ?

yyyymmdd is the only way to sort dates if they are in text format

mmddyyyy will never sort correctly in text format
ddmmyyyy will never sort correctly in text format


Changing from Text format to Date format will work, so long as your select statement does the sorting

Code:
Select value1, value2, value3, date1 from mytable Order by date1