European date format?

Hi,

I've been using the auto-formatting function for dates quite a lot, but I've noticed it only seems to do the US date format: month/day/year, as opposed to the European format: day/month/year, which is what I'm used to using.

Is there a preference for this somewhere?

I've set up my computer so that the system is in English, maybe that has something to do with it too.

I'd like 12/5/2009 to mean May 12, 2009 for example, not December 5...

Thanks for any tips!
Alexandra