Data in pivot table not sorting by date correctly

Question

Why is the 1/5/2013 data at the top rather than the bottom of my pivot table? The data itself sorts correctly.

Sum of FTE  Column Labels               
Row Labels  162 163 166 168 Grand Total
01/05/2013  1.40    6.13    1.13    1.07    9.73
07/07/2012  2.26    14.36   3.41    3.52    23.55
07/21/2012  2.98    16.78   4.80    4.22    28.78
08/04/2012  2.29    16.08   3.76    4.61    26.74
08/18/2012  3.60    16.07   4.51    3.95    28.14
09/01/2012  3.56    15.70   3.86    4.22    27.34
09/15/2012  2.69    14.70   3.39    4.55    25.34
09/29/2012  2.50    16.57   4.08    4.28    27.43
10/13/2012  3.94    14.77   3.74    3.82    26.27
10/27/2012  3.09    14.10   4.05    4.21    25.45
11/10/2012  2.37    14.75   4.75    4.58    26.45
11/24/2012  1.79    11.92   2.95    3.41    20.07
12/08/2012  3.09    15.40   3.37    3.69    25.55
12/22/2012  3.10    13.41   2.70    2.87    22.08
Grand Total 38.66   200.75  50.49   53.00   342.90

Solution

Are the dates really dates? Or text that looks like dates? You can find out when you go to the data source, select one of the date cells and apply a different date format.

You may need to convert the text that looks like dates to real dates, then refresh the pivot table.

Comments

[Solemnity]

If those date-cells are not in Date format, the underlying value will be text- and such, sorted left-right. Only if in the Date format will it have underlying time values that can be sorted chronologically.