Hidden Excel: Find Date Differences with DATEDIF

In honor of the 40th anniversary of J.K. Rowling’s seminal classic, Harry Potter, this post magically exposes a hidden excel function!

Date Difference between J.K. Rowling’s Birthday and Harry Potter Movie Debut

Ever wonder if your spreadsheet is keeping something from you?

DATEDIF is an under-documented function. It allows  you to calculate the difference between two dates. Although it doesn’t appear in the Function Wizard (it exists to insure backward compatibility with Lotus and earlier Excel versions) it is a powerhouse when it comes to calculating date differences.

Using DATEDIF function:

  • Format: =DATEDIF ( date1, date2, “interval”)
  • date1 must be the earlier of the two dates or an #NUM error is returned.

Interval Arguments:

y Years
m Months
d Days
ym Months, years excluded
yd Days, years excluded
md Days, years and months excluded

Cheers!

hɔuᴉnb

Additional reading:

Comments and questions are always welcome!

Author: quincy harley jr

Quincy is a technophile, coach and Learning Development expert. He has an extensive legal IT background and is practiced in MS Office application support and product development. As a project leader he has been integral in numerous new application rollouts. Whatever spare time he has, is spent with reading, archery and watching his young sons grow.

3 thoughts on “Hidden Excel: Find Date Differences with DATEDIF”

  1. Pingback: Networkdays.INTL – Ask Quincy
  2. Pingback: Midyear Roundup: My Best Dates – Ask Quincy
  3. Pingback: Hidden Excel: Spreadsheet Compare – Ask Quincy

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