Excel Formula: Count Days from Today

This tutorial provides the best formula to calculate the difference between a date and today in Excel.

If you want to follow along with this tutorial, please download the example spreadsheet.

Generic formula:

Syntaxt and Arguments

Return Value

The formula returns a numeric value.

Remark

Whether the given date is a past date or future date, it returns a positive value.

How this formula works

To count the days between today and the specific date in cell B3, please use below formula:

Press Enter key to get the result.

Then drag auto fill handle over other cells to apply this formula as you need.

Explanation

TODAY function: returns the current date.

ISBLANK function: returns TRUE if the cell is empty, or return FALSE if the cell is not empty.

IF function: performs a simple logical test depending on the comparison result, and it returns one value if a result is TRUE, or the other value if the result is FALSE.

Here the formula IF(ISBLANK(B3),"",TODAY()-B3)
If ISBLANK(B3) returns TRUE, then the IF formula returns empty, if ISBLANK(B3) returns FALSE, then the IF formula returns TODAY()-B3.

ABS function: returns absolute value of a number.

Note:

1. If you want to return future days as positive value, past days as negative value, use the formula as
=IF(ISBLANK(B3),"",B3-TODAY())

2. If you want to return future days as negative value, past days as positive value, use the formula as
=IF(ISBLANK(B3),"",TODAY()-B3)

Relative Formulas

• Count Weekdays only Between Two Dates
  This tutorial provides formulas to count the days excluding weekends and holidays between two dates
• Count Specific Weekday Between Two Dates
  This tutorial provides the formula to count a specific weekday between two given dates in Excel.
• Count Days Between Two Dates
  Here provide formulas to count days, weeks, months or years between two dates.
• Convert Weekday in A Date Range
  If there is a list of dates, how can you count a certain day of week in such a list of dates?

Relative Functions

• Excel WEEKNUM Function
  Returns the week number of the given date in a year
• Excel WORKDAY Function
  Adds workdays to the given start date and returns a workday
• 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 NOW Function
  Get the current time and date