Passing a variable into Left(string, VariableHere) not working - vba

Question

I have a data import file that has dates on it without a comma (i.e. January 1 2015). Excel won't recognize this as a date, and I need to work with these dates to find other dates (i.e. Date + Length of trip to find the last day of the trip, etc.)
I'm trying to use VBA to accomplish this and have the logic down but I'm encountering an error.
I'm taking the length of the date (January 1 2015), the 5 right characters (2015), the left of the whole length minus the 5 right characters(JANUARY 1), and then combining these variables with a comma inserted: Left(value-5) & ", " & Right(value, 5)
I'm using this code:
'correct date from JANUARY 1 2000 to JANUARY 1, 2000 so excel can recognize as date
LengthTrpDpt = Len(wb1.Sheets("BL Import").Cells(ioi, TrpDepCol)) 'length of date
LengthRightTrpDPt = Right(wb1.Sheets("BL Import").Cells(ioi, TrpDepCol), 5) 'finds right 5 of date " 2015"
NewListedDate = Left(wb1.Sheets("BL Import").Cells(ioi, TrpDepCol), LengthTrpDpt - 5) & ", " & LengthRightTrpDPt
The problem is with the NewListedDate variable. I can change the part LengthTrpDpt - 5 to a number and it works fine. For some reason I can't have an equation here though. I tried perform the equation in a separately saved variable (LengthMath = LengthTrpDpt - 5) and using LengthMath instead, but that doesn't work either.
LengthTrpDpt works fine and MsgBox's the correct number. Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

You should just Split() the date string to get your three parts, then piece them back together however you'd like:
Dim a
a = Split(wb1.Sheets("BL Import").Cells(ioi, TrpDepCol))
NewListedDate = a(0) & " " & a(1) & ", " & a(2)

Answer 2

Use Range.TextToColumns method on the column of text-that-look-like-dates.
with worksheets("Sheet1").columns(1) '<-change this to reflect the actual worksheet and column
.TextToColumns Destination:=.cells(1,1), DataType:=xlFixedWidth, FieldInfo:=Array(0, 3)
end with
The 0 tells T2C that it should just put everything back into the original column. The 3 is the MDY TextFileColumnDataTypes property.
imho, it is ALWAYS better to work with numbers and dates rather than a string representation approximating them.