Export pdf to Excel

A pdf table I export to Excel uses the Australian date format dd/mm/yy.

It has many lines of data with start and end dates.

After I open the Excel file the date is in the US format.

So a date 1st November 2016 which is displayed in the pdf document as 01/11/16 (Australian format) becomes 16 November 2001 in Excel.

Because I want calculate the number of days between the start and end dates I am unable to get a correct result because of this date formatting issue.

How can I get the Australian date format to be preserved in the Excel file?