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.

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• Calculate Calculate Days Hours Minutes Seconds Between Two Dates
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• Calculate Network Time With Break In A Timesheet
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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.