The DATE syntax looks crystal clear and straightforward on the surface. In practice, there may be some unobvious pitfalls that the below tips will help you avoid. Year

Subtracting days from a date: =DATE(2015, 5, 20) - 15The result of the above formula is May 5, 2015, which is May 20, 2015 minus 15 days. To subtract a date from today's date: =TODAY()-DATE(2015,5,20)The formula calculates how many days are between the current date and some other date that you specify. Another scenario when the Excel DATE function proves useful is when the dates are stored in the format that Microsoft Excel does not recognize, for instance DDMMYYYY. In this case, you can use DATE in liaison with other functions to convert a date stored as a numeric string or number into a date: Get the day of the year in Excel - this example explains a DATE/YEAR formula to get a day's number. For the detailed steps and more formula examples, please see How to conditionally format dates in Excel.Find the first day of month - how to get the 1st day of the month by the month number, from a given date and based on today's date. Excel interprets the year argument according to the date system set up on your computer. By default, Microsoft Excel for Windows uses the 1900 system where January 1, 1900 is represented by the serial number 1. For more details, please see Excel date format. Tip. To display a date rather than a serial number, apply the desired Date format to the formula cell. Example 2. How to return a date based on values in other cells The templates are blank, printable and macro-free and are easy to edit, amend, save and use again later. They are saved in Microsoft Excel ".xlsx" format and can be used with the newer versions of Excel that support the XML document standard (files with ".xlsx" extension - Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 and Office 365). If you have one of the older versions of Excel that only supports the ".xls" format (Excel 2000, 2002/XP & 2003), or if you don't have Excel installed, use Microsoft Office Online or one of the free Microsoft Excel/Microsoft Office alternatives FreeOffice PlanMaker, LibreOffice Calc and Google Sheets, which are all free of charge ( OpenOffice Calc unfortunately has minor formatting problems when opening our calendars). Also compatible with Microsoft Office for Mac (macOS) and Microsoft Office mobile for iPad/iOS, Android and Windows 10 mobile. Read more about the various Excel versions and file formats on Wikipedia. More free Excel calendar templates are also available from the Microsoft template gallery (calendar section).

Tip. At first sight, supplying negative values in the month or day argument of the Excel DATE function may seem absurd, but in practice it may turn out quite useful, for example in the complex formula that converts a week number to a date. Excel DATE formula examples Supposing you have a list of dates in column A and you want to shade dates that occurred earlier than 1-May-2015 in orange and those that occur after 31-May-2015 in green. Below you will find a few examples of using DATE formulas in Excel beginning with the simplest ones. Example 1. DATE formula to return a serial number for a date

Date Calculators

The DATE function is available in all versions of Excel 365 - Excel 2007. DATE function - tips and notes Calculate the number of days in a month - how to get the number of days based on the month number or on a date. And this formula outputs a serial number for the first day of the current month in the current year: Instead of specifying the values representing the year, month and day directly in a formula, you can have some or all arguments driven by of other Excel date functions. For instance, combine the YEAR and TODAY to get a serial number for the first day of the current year. If you are adding or subtracting two dates that are stored in some cells, then the formula is as simple as =A1+B1 or A1-B1, respectively.

The DATE function is very helpful for calculating dates where the year, month, and day values are stored in other cells. In case you want not only to calculate but also highlight dates in your Excel worksheets, then create conditional formatting rules based on DATE formulas. For example, here's how you can add 4 different units in cells B3:E3 to the date in A4. The formula in B4 is built in real-time as you change the conditions: For example, to find the serial number for the date, taking the values in cells A2, A3 and A4 as the year, month and day arguments, respectively, the formula is: The templates are saved in Microsoft Excel ".xlsx" format and can be used with the newer versions of Excel that support the XML document standard (Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 and Office 365). If you have one of the older versions of Excel that only supports the ".xls" format (Excel 2000, 2002/XP & 2003), or if you don't have Excel installed, use Microsoft Office Online or one of the Microsoft Excel/Microsoft Office alternatives FreeOffice PlanMaker, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and others, which are all free of charge ( OpenOffice Calc unfortunately has minor formatting problems when opening our calendars). Also compatible with Microsoft Office for Mac (macOS) and Microsoft Office mobile for iPad/iOS, Android and Windows 10 mobile.

Help and Example Use

And here are a few more examples where Excel DATE is used in combination with other functions in more complex formulas: