The Excel YEAR Function

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Related Functions :

DAY Function

MONTH Function

DATE Function

Basic Description

The Excel YEAR function, when supplied with a date, returns an integer representing the year.

The format of the function is :

YEAR( Date )

where the Date argument can be supplied to the function as either :

A references to cells containing dates

A date returned from another formula or function

Warning: If you attempt to input the Date argument as text, there is a chance that Excel may misinterpret this due to different date systems, or date interpretation settings.

Also, although you can input the Date as a serial number, this is not recommended as the serial numbers may vary across different computer systems.

Example

The following example shows the function used to extract the year from 3 different dates. The spreadsheet on the left shows the format of the function and the spreadsheet on the right shows the results for the 3 dates.

Formulas

	A	B
1	29-May-2008	=YEAR( A1 )
2	05/03/1984	=YEAR( A2 )
3		=YEAR( DATE( 2010, 1, 1 ) )

Results

	A	B
1	29-May-2008	2008
2	05/03/1984	1984
3		2010

Note that, in the above examples, as recommended by Microsoft, the date value is always supplied as either a reference to a cell containing a date, or as a value returned from another function.

Further examples of the Excel Year function can be found on the Microsoft Office website.

Common Error With the Excel Year Function

Problem:

The result of your Year function looks like a date (eg. "01/01/1900"), instead of returning an integer.

Solution:

This problem arises because the new cell or column is formatted as a 'date'. In this case, it is only the formatting of the cell that is wrong, NOT the value returned by the function.

To correct this,

Highlight the cell(s) with the wrong formatting
Right click with the mouse
Select the Format Cells ... option and ensure the Number tab is selected
Under the Category heading, select the option General and click OK

- See the Excel Formatting page for more details on formatting in Excel.