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Working with Data in Excel

Working with Dates

To Excel, a date is simply a number that represents the number of days since January 1, 1900. When you enter data in a date format, Excel converts it into the serial number representing the date so that it could be used for calculations.

Useful functions:

  • = TODAY() - Generates today's date
  • = NOW() - Generates today's date and current time
  • = YEAR() - Extracts the year from a given date
  • = MONTH() - Extracts the month from a given date
  • = DAY() - Extracts the day from a given date
  • = WEEKDAY() - Returns the weekday number of a given day
  • = WEEKNUM() - Returns the week number of a given date
  • = DATEDIF(E7, TODAY(), "Y") - To calculate difference between two dates, e.g., to calculate age
  • = ((TODAY()-E7)/365) - Another way to calculate difference between dates