Excel Formula: Calculate Difference Between Two Dates in Years/Months/Weeks/Days
Sometimes, in Excel worksheet, we need to calculate the difference between two dates for getting the durations. Here in this tutorial, it introduces the formulas on calculating difference between two dates in years, months, weeks, and days.
If you want to follow along with this tutorial, please download the example spreadsheet.
Generic formula:
Calculate difference in days
| DATEDIF(start_date,end_date,"d") |
Calculate difference in weeks
| DATEDIF(start_date,end_date,"d")/7 |
Calculate difference in months
| DATEDIF(start_date,end_date,"m") |
Calculate difference in years
| DATEDIF(start_date,end_date,"y") |
Arguments
| Start_datetime: The starting date in the date range. The start date must be smaller than the end date, or the formula will return the error result #NUM!. |
| End_datetime: The ending date in the date range you want to calculate the date duration. The end date must be greater than the start date, otherwise the formula will return the error value #NUM!. |
| D: Return difference in days. |
| D/7:Return difference in weeks. 7 days a week, to return days firstly then divides 7 to get the number of weeks. As the formula returns value in date format, you need to format the result to general or number to get the number of weeks. |
| M: Return difference in months. |
| Y: Return difference in years. |
How this formula work
Supposing you need to calculate the duration between the dates in cell B4 and B6, please use below formula
Calculate difference in days
| =DATEDIF(B4,B6,"d") |
Calculate difference in weeks
| =DATEDIF(B4,B6,"d")/7 |
Calculate difference in months
| =DATEDIF(B4,B6,"m") |
Calculate difference in years
| =DATEDIF(B4,B6,"y") |
Press Enter key to get the result.
Tip: the formula to calculate difference in weeks will get the result in date format, just format the result cell as general or number as you need.
Explanation
DATEDIF function: this function is used to calculate the difference between two dates in days, weeks, month, years, days ignoring years, or month ignoring years.
Relative Formulas
- Calculate days remaining in month
In this tutorial, it provides a formula to quickly calculate the days remaining in month in Excel. - Calculate Calculate Days Hours Minutes Seconds Between Two Dates
Sometimes, we may want to get the days, hours, minutes, and seconds between two datetimes, this tutorial introduces the formula to solve this job. - Calculate Days Remaining Between Two Dates
Here, this tutorial provides a formula to quickly calculate the left days between two dates. - Calculate Network Time With Break In A Timesheet
It provides the formula which uses the MOD function to calculate the network time with breaks in Excel.
Relative Functions
- Excel IF Function
Test for specified conditions, then returns the corresponding values - Excel VALUE Function
Convert text to number. - Excel MONTH Function
The MONTH is used to get the month as integer number (1 to 12) from date. - Excel DAY Function
DAY function gets the day as a number (1 to 31) from a date - Excel YEAR Function
The YEAR function returns the year based on the given date in a 4-digit serial number format.
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