DATE

Purpose

• Provides a date (as an Excel serial number) when given a year, month and day

Example

• Note that we initially formatted cells E5:E7 as numbers on purpose, to show you that a serial number is being generated from the formula
• Here is a screenshot, for reference:

Syntax

• =DATE(year, month, day)

Arguments

• year
  • This is the year in question (e.g. 2020)
  • This can be a hard-coded number, cell reference, or calculation
• month
  • This is the month in question (e.g. 5)
  • This can also be thought of as the number of months to add to the year
  • For example, a value of 13 will add 13 months to the year you entered
  • This can be a hard-coded number, cell reference, or calculation
• day
  • This is the day in question (e.g. 31)
  • This can also be thought of as the number of days to add to the year and month
  • For example, a value of -50 will subtract 50 days to the year and span class="arg2">month you entered
  • This can be a hard-coded number, cell reference, or calculation

Tips

• Make it a practice to utilize Excel-recognized serial number dates, rather than text that looks like a date
• Why? Excel is built to handle date serial numbers in a much more dynamic fashion (e.g. PivotTables, sorting/filtering, formulas, etc.)

External Links

• Microsoft: DATE Function