>>>
>>>The problem occurs after you do copy file to ... type xl5 where file has blank dates.
>>>I'm using Excel 2003 too.
>>
>>The problem is that VFP ouputs " - -" for empty dates not that Excel shows something that is not there.
>
>I tried blank fields date_field, but this didn't help. It would be quite complex task to fix it in Excel using my routine.

Try to replace empty dates with NULLs before COPY XL5.