For anyone looking into this to find a good answer – I'm sorry, but as of this post there isn't one.
However, there IS an answer. The support staff sent me the solution – which is to create a custom field where you create a formula to present the value from the date field you are working with. Then, apply the formatting to THAT field through the configurator (and, of course, don't display the original field).
As you likely are now, I was disappointed by this "walk around the block" to "find the back door".