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How to conditional format dates less than/greater than today in Excel?

You can conditional format dates based on current date in Excel. For example, you can format dates before today, or format dates greater than today. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the TODAY function in conditional formatting to highlight due dates or future dates in Excel in details.

Conditional format dates before today or dates in the future in Excel

Conditional format dates before today or dates in the future in Excel

Let’s say you have a list of date as below screenshot shown. For letting the due dates and the future dates outstanding, please do as follows.

1. Select the range A2:A15, then click Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules under Home tab. See screenshot:

2. In the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box, click the New Rule button.

3. In the New Formatting Rule dialog box, you need to:

1). Select Use a formula to determine which cells to format in the Select a Rule Type section;

2). For formatting the dates older than today, please copy and paste the formula =$A2<TODAY() into the Format values where this formula is true box;

For formatting the future dates, please use this formula =$A2>TODAY();

3). Click the Format button. See screenshot:

4. In the Format Cells dialog box, specify the format for the due dates or future dates, and then click the OK button.

5. Then it returns to the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box. And the due dates formatting rule is created. If you want to apply the rule now, please click the Apply button.

6. But if you want to apply the due dates rule and the future dates rule together, please create a new rule with the future date formatting formula by repeating the above steps from 2 to 4.

7. When it returns to the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box again, you can see the two rules are showing in the box, please click the OK button to start formatting.

Then you can see the dates older than today and the date greater than today are successfully formatted.

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Comments (24)
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Debi
Debi
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I want to highlight a cell if:
1. today's date is greater than the date in another cell or blank (=TODAY()>'APM Tracker'P14) AND ALSO;
2. If the date in P15 is greater than P14 same highlight color AND ALSO;
3. If the date in P15 is less than P14 I do not want the highlight
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Kirthika
Kirthika
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Hey All,

I want to get only past due dates in the particular column. Instead of highlighting the cells with color i need the dates to be picked in the column

Any solution for this....
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Michael
Michael
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Alright, I read through this thread and did not see this question asked/answered. I have a column of future dates. I would like to add conditional formatting to flag that date exactly 30 days before (1st color "Hey you should get this done its due in 30 day's") and 7 days ( 2nd color "You procrastinated and now you have 7 days to complete this"). Any help here?
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crystal
crystal     Michael
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Hi Michael,
I am not sure I understand your question clearly. If you want to hight the date which is 30 days and 7 days from today. Please use the following formulas to create two formula rules with different highlighted colors:
=D9=TODAY()+30
=D9=TODAY()+7
https://www.extendoffice.com/images/stories/comments/comment-picture-zxm/conditional-formatting.png
If this is not what you need, please attach a screenshot of your data here.
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Andy Campbell
Andy Campbell
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To ignore cells that have blanks try this:

=AND($A2<>"",$A2<TODAY())

This assumes the cell you have selected is A2 (change this to whatever cell you have currently selected)
To copy this to the applicable cells, change the "Applies to" to the cell range you need.
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crystal
crystal     Andy Campbell
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Hi Andy Campbell,
Thank you for sharing.
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michelle sparrow
michelle sparrow
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Hi
I am trying to use condition formatting to allow a cell to be highlighted when an item is past due based on different turn around times (TAT). I have a column with a submitted date which is then used with the #of days from the TAT to automatically give the due date. Using the following formula, =IF(OR(E3="",A3=""),"",DATE(YEAR(A3),MONTH(A3),DAY(A3)+E3))
The condition formatting currently used is "cell value < today()" applies to +$G:$G.
What I would like to do is use the stop if rule to stop the condition formatting if the date entered in column "H" is < or = to todays date.
Thanks Michelle
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anggar
anggar
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if i want highlight the due date with the conditional : today less or equal 30 days from due date
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Scooter73
Scooter73
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I am trying to create conditional formatting that will highlight rows older than 14 days in yellow and highlight rows older than 21 days in red. My date column starts in A2, I have the following rules applied, but only yellow is highlighting and just the date column, not the entire row. Can you help? Scott

1. =ISBLANK(A2)=TRUE
2. =A2<TODAY()-14
3. =A2<TODAY()-21
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Madhu
Madhu
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I want to ignore blank cells which doesn't have a date i.e I do not want blank cells to be highlighted when I am comparing dates<Today(). Please help
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crystal
crystal     Madhu
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Hi Madhu,
The first method in this artice can help you solve the problem. Please have a try.
https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/2499-excel-conditional-formatting-ignore-blank-zero.html
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grant
grant
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1 colum has the dates in it i want another colum to change colour when this formula is applied.

any ideas?
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crystal
crystal     grant
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Hi grant,
Supposing you want to change the cell color in column B based on dates in column A, please select the column B cells (such as B2:B21), and apply the conditional formatting function with the above formulas =$A2>Today() or =$A2<Today().
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SG
SG
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Hello! can anyone help me?

I have =TODAY() formula in A1 and need 3 more rules to work as per below

rule 1 all dates 8 to 14 days older than today

rule 2 : all dates older 14 to 30 days than today

rule 3: all dates 31 or more days older than today
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Lukas
Lukas     SG
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it should be something like this:

if(*cell*+8>Today();if(*cell*+14<Today();"8-14 from today";"N/A"))
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