>>Depending on how you use those dates, you can store them either as numbers or as strings.
>
>I have calculations on those dates, so is the ability of storing them as numbers would still be applicable? If yes, how one would proceed to store a date under a numeric approach?


Pick a starting date and take the number of days from that point like excel does....

39880 would be the number of days since 1/1/1900 in excel.