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. 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

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. 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. YearThe 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. Calculate the number of days in a month - how to get the number of days based on the month number or on a date. 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: And here are a few more examples where Excel DATE is used in combination with other functions in more complex formulas:

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 For the detailed steps and more formula examples, please see How to conditionally format dates in Excel. 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. Get the day of the year in Excel - this example explains a DATE/YEAR formula to get a day's number. The DATE function is available in all versions of Excel 365 - Excel 2007. DATE function - tips and notes 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.