Converting YYYYMMDD to MM/DD/YYYY

Hi,

I have a SQL 2008 database with dates in a table stored in the format YYYYMMDD.

20041201
20040308
20040108
20040113

The above are examples of the dates in the tables.  The field is TRANDATE and the data is stored as decimal(9, 0).  I have written a SQL view to join a few tables so that we can use the view to pull data into microsoft excel with user friendly field names for analysis.  I am looking for a way to convert the dates so that they display as MM/DD/YYYY instead of the YYYYMMDD format.  I have searched ee and found the example:

Convert(VARCHAR(50),Convert(Datetime, '20110125'),101)

This successfully converts the string “20110125” to 01/25/2011.  I tried changing this to Convert(VARCHAR(50),Convert(Datetime, dbo.OESHDT.TRANDATE),101), however, I get the error message:

SQL Execution Error.

Executed SQL Statement: SELECT ……………………….
Error Source: .Net Sql Client Data Provider
Error Message: Arithmetic Overflow error converting expression to data type datetime.

I am extremely confused as to why I would get this error.  If I change the date string in the initial statement from '20110125' to any date like ‘20120316’, or with the function GetDate(), the date will be displayed correctly.  I would assume that putting the field name from the table would return the value and would work correctly.

Am I looking at this the wrong way?  Can someone please assist or show me another way?

Thanks in advance.