Working With Dates In Excel

This week I’ve been working on date formulas, from very simple ones, to complex formulas that calculate workdays per month, based on start and end dates that can span several months.

Extract Information from a Date

Many times I need to pull a bit of information from a date, such as the year, month or weekday.

In the section below, I’ve listed the sample Excel formulas I would use, to calculate specific dates in Excel.

  • For all formulas, the date — December 29, 2008 — is in cell A2.
Date Calculation Formulas
Date Calculation Formulas

Date Calculation Formulas

Here are the formulas to extract information from a date in cell A2.

To Calculate

The Formula

The Result

Year =YEAR(A2) 2008
Month Number =MONTH(A2) 12
Month Name (short) =TEXT(A2,”mmm”) Dec
Month Name (long) =TEXT(A2,”mmmm”) December
Day of the month =DAY(A2) 29
Weekday Number =WEEKDAY(A2,1) 2
Weekday Name (short) =TEXT(A2,”ddd”) Mon
Weekday Name (long) =TEXT(A2,”dddd”) Monday
Year Month =TEXT(A2,”yyyy mm”) 2008 12

Using Calculated Dates in Pivot Table

If I plan to create a pivot table from data that contains a date field, I usually calculate the year and month in the source data.

Then I can add those fields to the pivot table, instead of the individual dates.

Yes, the pivot table could automatically group the individual dates by year and month, but that can limit other functions in the pivot table.

For example:

  • if two pivot tables are based on the same data, grouping one pivot table by month would cause the other pivot table to also be grouped by month.
  • if a field is grouped, you cannot add calculated items to the pivot table
pivot table error message - cannot add a calculated item
pivot table error message – cannot add a calculated item

Video: Pivot Table Grouping Tips

This video shows how to group pivot table dates by month and years, and how to group text items manually.

There are written steps, and an Excel workbook, on the How to Group Pivot Table Data page, on my Contextures site.

Pivot Table Grouping

For more information on Excel pivot table grouping, go to the How to Group Pivot Table Data page, on my Contextures site.

There are examples for grouping dates, number and text fields. You’ll also see solutions for fixing pivot table grouping problems, such as the error message, “Cannot group that selection”

14 thoughts on “Working With Dates In Excel”

  1. Hello.
    I am a newcomer here.
    I became a fan of this site from the very beginning.
    Few days ago I tried to make pivot items visible and your idea helped me a lot and what more important drove me to this site.
    THANK YOU VERY MUCH INDEED.
    Now I have a little problem with the date of last save in VBA. I want to show a MsgBox when user opens the file. Of course I can use spreadsheet cell to register the date whenever Excel is saved. But Excel stores this date in workbook properties but I cannot find it in VBA.
    Can you help?
    Best regards
    Mariusz

  2. Calculated fields in pivot tables is one of those features that seem like such a good idea when listed in a bullet point, but which don’t live up to their billing. So I’ve usually added a calculation column to the source data.
    It used to be a real pain to add these calculations to the data. Whenever more records were added, you had to drag the formula down to include all of the rows. Then you had to update the pivot table source range.
    With Excel 2003’s Lists (and their descendent, Excel 2007’s Tables), the data source adjusts automatically, and any calculations also autofill themselves.

  3. hello;
    i appreciate highly your blog and i had learned interessting things from you.
    THank you very much.
    I use excel every day more than 10 hours!
    i love excel because he is like women : a lot of sercets and very funy!
    thank you avery much again and again…
    i like very much your book “Beginning PivotTables in Excel 2007” and i recommanded because your style is so clear that your reader will undertsand your ideas very easily.
    is it difficult to write a book? i plan to make a try…
    your faithfully

  4. Mariusz, you can use the FileDateTime in VBA. I’ll post an example tomorrow.
    Jon, you’re right, calculations in the source data are usually less of a headache, than trying to do them in the pivot tables. And it still surprises me when I enter a formula at the top of a table in Excel 2007, and it automatically fills down.
    And yes, ‘Just to thank you about’, it is difficult to write a book. The hardest part is sitting in the chair for the hundreds of hours that it takes, and staying focused. Thanks for letting me know that you liked it!

  5. Groups are only shared when pivot tables share the same pivot cache (I believe) – if you want two pivot tables to share the same data, but not the same groupings, you can use different range names (which have the same range address) or create the pivot tables each with different number of rows, and then once they are both created, change the addresses to include the same number of rows.

  6. I’m having difficulty trying to count the number of rows within a date range – any help would be greatly appreciated..
    Let me explain
    I have a column “A” which contains a list of “Create Dates”, I want to count the number of rows where the create date is in a month e.g.
    Create Date
    04/03/2009
    05/03/2009
    05/03/2009
    06/03/2009
    20/05/2009
    20/05/2009
    22/05/2009
    The formula would look at this and give me the number of rows for March is 4 and a second formula would tell me the number of rows for May is 2

  7. Found the solution in case anyone is interested;
    =COUNTIF(Data!A:A,">="&DATE(2009,5,1))-COUNTIF(Data!A:A,">"&DATE(2009,5,31))
    Thankfully I wasn’t far off …

  8. I want to arrive at 1st day of billing of any product from my data base in which customer would have started billing from various dates. e.g. A customer has started billing from 1st of the month, answer should be 1. If B customer has started billing from 5th of the month, the answer should be 5. How to arrive at the answer in excel with the use of formula.

  9. Hi Debra
    We have used Excel for many years to act as our company calendar…..personnel across the columns and daily dates down the left column. Four people share it. It has an automatic save every 5 minutes. From time to time, it goes “do-lally” after a close down and shows up when it is opened the following morning….lines and entries are duplicated/moved. It never seems to apply to the columns. All four users have the same settings for the sheet. Any suggestions as to why this is happening?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.