The Excel DATE Function
Basic DescriptionThe Excel DATE function, when supplied with integers representing a year, month and day, returns an Excel date. The format of the function is:
DATE( year, month, day )
where the arguments are integer values, representing the year, month and day of the date to be returned. Typically, the month will be between 1 and 12 and the day will be between 1 and 31. However, these value can extend below or above these ranges, in which case, they behave as follows:
Note also, that the year, month and day arguments can be supplied to the Date function either directly, as values returned from other formulas, or as references to cells containing values. Excel Date Function ExamplesThe following spreadsheet shows the Date function applied to 3 different data sets. The formulas are shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the results are shown in the spreadsheet on the right.
Note that the above resulting dates are formatted in the UK date format, dd/mm/yyyy. Read more about Excel formatting here. Further information and examples of the Excel Date function can be found on the Microsoft Office website. Trouble ShootingSome Excel users experience the following common problem with the Excel Date function: Common Date Function Problem
The Excel Date function returns a number instead of a date Possible Reason
This is likely to be due to the formatting of the cell. I.e. the function has actually returned the correct value, but the cell is displaying the date serial number, instead of the date format. To correct this,
- See the Excel Formatting page for more details on formatting in Excel. |
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