All dates in Excel has an associated date value, which is how Excel calculates the passage of time (using midnight on 1/1/1900 as the starting point). Date 1 is 1/1/1900. Date 2 is 1/2/1900. Date 3 is January 3, 1900. The format here is month/day/year.

44899 as a General format in a cell will be converted to 12/4/2022 when you change the format to Short Date. The screenshot below is based on Maven Analytics course at Udemy.com. Check it out (I’m not an affiliate of Maven).