InfoPath Dev

I noticed that metadata from my Infopath forms that is stored in SharePoint is not consistent in terms of format. Dates in particular. Desspite the fact I am using date picker with DD/MM/YYYY format applied, and when submiting to sharepoint column is set as merge - it shows in 2 different ways - either as DD-MM-YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY , while the first version cannot be adjusted when imported to Excel. Any clues what I am doing wrong?

Dates in XML forms can be formatted in various ways, for display purposes, but the XML source stores the date in XML format. Save the XML and open it in Notepad if you wish to see what that format is exacty.

Sometimes, depending on the source of the data, the formats differ. I've seen

2013-12-30T01:30:30

and

2013-12-30 01:30:30

Some cleanup in the form might be required before the dates are pushed out to SharePoint, SQL, etc.