Happy Excel Day 45678

Where does the time go? Two years ago, we were celebrating Excel Day 45000, and suddenly it’s Excel Day 45678!

Do you have any special events planned? If not, you could make the office festive, with a few balloons and a magic marker!

Excel Milestones

We love Excel milestones, here on the Contextures Blog.

• Our first Excel date celebration was Excel Day 40000, way back on July 6, 2009.

• We followed that with a party for Excel Day 42000, on December 27, 2014.

• Somehow, I overlooked Day 43000, but we celebrated Day 44000,

• Another special day was Excel Day 44444.

• Most recently, we celebrated Excel day 45000, on March 15, 2023, almost 2 years ago!

And now it’s Day 45678!

What Day Number Is It?

How did we know it’s day 45678? How can you tell what day number it is in Excel?

First, type any date in an Excel worksheet cell. Or, type this formula, to see the current date:

• =TODAY()

Then, change that cell to General format, to see the serial number for that date.

In the screen shot below:

• I typed today’s date in cell E2 – Jan 21, 2025
• Next, in cell F2, I typed this formula, to link to the date cell:
  • =E2
• When I formatted cell F2 as General, it showed that today, Jan 21, 2025, is Excel Day 45678.

Consecutive Number Days

Today is a consecutive 5-digit number Excel day – 45678. Those are pretty rare, and exactly 11111 days apart.

The final one is 56789, on June 24, 2055, over 30 years from now.

Will you still be using Excel then?

Reverse Sequences

[update] Thanks to AnnaLisa Lawson, who suggested that we also celebrate the reverse sequence days.

It’s a great idea, and gives us 5 more Excel days to celebrate!

• Yes, but couldn’t we also celebrate the consecutive numbers backwards? Then the next one wouldn’t be quite so many days! 54321 = 9/20/2048
  54321
  65432
  76543
  87654
  98765

More Excel Day Milestones

As you can see from the list of Excel milestones below, we only have about 11 months to get ready for the next special day:

• Excel Day 46000 falls on Tuesday, December 9, 2025.

Be sure to mark that day in your calendar, and come back here to celebrate again!

Use the TEXT Function

For extra fun and entertainment, you could use a formula to change a number into a date.

• In a worksheet cell, type a number, between 1 and 2,958,465
• Next, use the Excel TEXT function to format the number as a date, with a specific format.

In the screen shot below, I used the following formula in cell B4, to show the date with its weekday, month, day, and year.

• =TEXT(B2,”ddd mmm dd, yyyy”)

There are more TEXT function examples on my Contextures site, and I’ve put a video below, to show more TEXT function formatting examples.

Video: TEXT Function Examples

Watch this 3-minute video to see how to combine cells in Excel, with text and number format in the result.

You can get the written steps, and Excel sample file, on the Combine Text and Numbers page, on my Contextures site.

Video Timeline

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:13 Simple Formula
• 0:52 Add Formatting
• 1:41 Another Date Format
• 2:04 Add the Year
• 2:29 More Formats
• 3:04 Get the Workbook

Excel Date System Notes

Here are a few notes on formatting numbers as dates in Excel:

• In Excel, you can format positive numbers in any of the date formats, to see the date that they represent.
• The Excel 1900 date system uses January 1, 1900 as a starting point – number 1.
• There is also an Excel 1904 date system, which uses January 1, 1904 as a starting point. That was the default system in old versions of Excel for Mac.
• The number zero is formatted as January 0, 1900, which is calculated as December 31, 1899
• The latest date allowed for calculation in Excel is 12/31/9999, which is the number 2958465

Learn more about the Excel date systems on the Microsoft website.

Related Links

Date Function Examples

Excel Date and Time FAQ

Excel Dates Fix Format

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Happy Excel Day 45678