For instance, combine the YEAR and TODAY to get a serial number for the first day of the current year.Īnd 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. This is the most obvious use of the DATE function in Excel.įor example, to return a serial number corresponding to 2, use this formula:

A simple DATE formula to return a serial number for a date

Excel DATE formula examplesīelow you will find a few examples of using DATE formulas in Excel beginning with the simplest ones. The DATE function is available in all versions of Excel 2019, Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010, and lower. 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. What the Excel DATE function does is return the serial number of a specified date. Date & Time Wizard - quick way to build Excel date formulas.Excel DATE formulas in conditional formatting.DATE formulas to add and subtract dates.Return a date based on values in other cells.How to get a serial number representing a date.Instead, you should use the DATE function to get a serial number representing the date, the number that Excel understands and can operate on. Not all Excel date functions can recognize dates entered as text values, therefore it's not recommended to supply dates directly in calculations. Instead, Microsoft Excel stores dates as serial numbers and this is the main source of confusion. As you probably know, Excel does not keep the year, month and day for a date, nor does it explicitly store weekday information in a cell. When it comes to calculating dates in Excel, DATE is the most essential function to understand.

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