Google Apps Script using wrong date format in excel - email

Question

So I am working on a Google Apps script that pulls an email address, subject, and body from a Google sheet file. This info is used to send an email out. Right now in my Subject column for the Google Sheets file I have =TODAY() so that the date is pulled. My script updates this column everyday so the date is always current.
The issue is that when the email comes the subject line shows
"Sat Aug 11 2018 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (PDT) "
Instead of...
08/11/18 like its setup for in Google Sheets
Not sure why this could be, My code is below.
/**
* Creates a two time-driven triggers.
*/
function createTimeDrivenTriggers() {
// Trigger every 6 hours.
ScriptApp.newTrigger('adddate')
.timeBased()
.atHour(21)
.everyDays(1)
.inTimezone("America/Los_Angeles")
.create()
ScriptApp.newTrigger('sendEmails2')
.timeBased()
.atHour(22)
.everyDays(1)
.inTimezone("America/Los_Angeles")
.create()
}
/**
* This is my hacky way to make sure sheets has today's date.
*/
function adddate() {
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getActiveSheet();
var cell = sheet.getRange(2,2);
cell.setValue('=TODAY()');
}
// This constant is written in column C for rows for which an email
// has been sent successfully.
var EMAIL_SENT = 'SUCCESSFULLY SENT';
/**
* Sends non-duplicate emails with data from the current spreadsheet.
*/
function sendEmails2() {
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
var startRow = 2; // First row of data to process
var numRows = 2; // Number of rows to process
// Fetch the range of cells A2:B3
var dataRange = sheet.getRange(startRow, 1, numRows, 3);
// Fetch values for each row in the Range.
var data = dataRange.getValues();
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; ++i) {
var row = data[i];
var emailAddress = row[0]; // First column
var subject = row[1]; // Second column
var message = row[2]; // Third column
var emailSent = row[3]; // Fourth column
if (emailSent != EMAIL_SENT) { // Prevents sending duplicates
MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
sheet.getRange(startRow + i, 3).setValue(EMAIL_SENT);
// Make sure the cell is updated right away in case the script is interrupted
SpreadsheetApp.flush();
}
}
}

Answer 1

The problem you are encountering is that your cell is formatted as a date and you are passing it as a parameter that expects a string. At that point you are no longer controlling the conversion, and you are getting way more than you wanted. Two ways to address it.
1) Make it a string in the first place with
cell.setValue('=text(TODAY(),"mm/dd/yy"');
which does run the risk of ruining any date processing you do on it at first (though I see none, so probably fine).
So probably better is (not 1, just this)
2) is to get the displayed string while leaving the underlying date like you had it with var subject = row[1].getDisplayValue();
2) has the added benefit of going with the date format for which sheets is set up.