Date formatting excel formula

Excel сохраняет даты в виде порядковых номеров. Человеку невозможно их читать и понимать, но, таким образом, можно использовать их в функциях расчета, к примеру добавить к дате или времени какое-то количество времени (день, год и так далее).

Но, довольно часто, вам может быть нужно использовать даты в одних ячейках с текстом, так сказать, объединять.

На картинке пример объединения даты с текстом в одной ячейке. Видите как выглядит наша дата? Это формат порядкового номера Excel.

Именно в таких ситуациях вам может понадобиться привести дату в «читаемый» формат.

Переводим дату в текстовый формат

Когда нам нужно привести дату в определенный формат (к примеру, 16-08-2016), мы можем вызвать функцию ТЕКСТ.

Итак, как она работает.

Синтаксис:

=ТЕКСТ(значение; формат_текста)

Она принимает два аргумента:

• Значение — в нашем случае это дата, которую вы хотите преобразовать в текст нужного формата. Это может быть просто дата, ссылка на ячейку с датой, или результат формулы.

• Формат_текста — формат, в котором нужно показать нашу дату. Формат должен быть указан в двойных кавычках.

Какие есть форматы и разделители?

Формат дат состоит из 4 составляющих:

• день

• месяц

• год

• разделитель

Ниже приведены форматы, которые можно использовать для каждой части:

Формат дня:

• Д — день будет отображаться без нуля, т.е. 1 будет отображаться как 1, а 12 как 12.
• ДД — день будет отображаться с нулем, т.е. 1 будет 01, а 12 как 12.
• ДДД — будет отображаться день недели(сокращенно), т.е. «Пятница» будет «Пят».
• ДДДД — будет отображаться день недели(полностью), т.е. «Пятница» будет «Пятница».

Формат месяца:

• М — месяц будет отображаться без нуля, т.е. 1 будет отображаться как 1, а 12 как 12.
• ММ — месяц будет отображаться с нулем, т.е. 1 будет 01, а 12 как 12.
• МММ — месяц будет отображаться с сокращенным названием, т.е. «Сентябрь» будет «Сен».

М — месяц будет отображаться без нуля, т.е. 1 будет отображаться как 1, а 12 как 12.
ММ — месяц будет отображаться с нулем, т.е. 1 будет 01, а 12 как 12.
МММ — месяц будет отображаться с сокращенным названием, т.е. «Сентябрь» будет «Сен».
ММММ — месяц будет отображаться с полным названием, т.е. «Сентябрь» будет «Сентябрь».

Формат года:

• ГГ — год будет отображаться как 2 цифры, т.е. 2019 будет 19.
• ГГГГ — год будет отображаться полностью, т.е. 2019 будет 2019.

Разделитель:

• «/» : это просто разделитель между цифрами в дате, т.е. отображаться будет как 01/01/2019.
• «-»: такой же разделитель между цифрами, т.е. отображаться будет как 01-01-2019.
• Пробелы и запятые: тут немного посложней, вы можете комбинировать и создавать свои форматы отображения, например, 01 января, 2019 года.

Итак, разберем примеры.

Как привести указанную дату в текстовый формат

Пример:

Итак, мы получили дату вместе с текстом, но дата сейчас в формате порядкового номера Excel.

Формула:

="Дата"&A2&"="&B2  

Теперь, нам нужно получить дату в «привычном» для нас виде.

Формула будет:

="Дата "&A2&" = "&ТЕКСТ(B2;"ДД.ММ.ГГГГ")

Итак, мы вызвали функцию ТЕКСТ, указали ссылку на ячейку и определили формат, результат вы видите на картинке выше.

Какие еще есть форматы и как они выглядят на «выходе»:

Как привести текущую дату в текстовый формат

Для того чтобы получить текущую дату мы можем использовать функцию СЕГОДНЯ.

Формула:

="Сегодня "&ТЕКСТ(СЕГОДНЯ();"ДД/ММ/ГГГГ")

Эта функция может пригодиться вам в случае, если вы формируете отчеты, где важна, например, дата изменения файла.

Переводим дату в текстовый формат с помощью функции «Текст по столбцам»

Если формулы и вызов функций вам не по душе, есть вариант и для вас.

Допустим, у нас есть следующие данные и нам нужно преобразовать их в текстовый формат:

Пошаговая инструкция:

• Выделите ячейки, которые необходимо преобразовать в текст;

• Перейдите в раздел «Данные» -> «Текст по столбцам»;

• В открывшемся окне:

• Выберите опцию «с разделителями»;

• Снимите все галочки и нажмите «Далее»;

• Выберите формат «текстовый» укажите куда поместить наши, уже текстовые, значения и нажмите «Готово».

Функция сразу же переводит даты в текстовый формат.

Важная информация: эта функция устанавливает формат для дат по умолчанию для настроек вашей системы. То есть если вы хотите записать даты в определенном формате вам нужно использовать способы рассмотренные ранее, но для начала дочитайте нашу статью, возможно следующий вариант подойдет вам.

Переводим дату в текстовый формат с помощью копирования и вставки

Пошаговая инструкция:

• Выделите ячейки с датами, которые нужно преобразовать, и скопируйте их;

• Откройте обычный блокнот и вставьте наши данные туда, как только вы это сделаете, данные сразу же потеряют формат, т.е. станут обычным текстом (потому что в блокноте нет никаких форматов данных, кроме текста);

• Выделите ячейки, куда вы будете вставлять даты и поменяйте их формат на «Текстовый»;

• А теперь, заново скопируйте даты из блокнота, а затем вставьте их в Excel.

Excel сохраняет даты в виде порядковых номеров. Человеку невозможно их читать и понимать, но, таким образом, можно использовать их в функциях расчета, к примеру добавить к дате или времени какое-то количество времени (день, год и так далее).

Но, довольно часто, вам может быть нужно использовать даты в одних ячейках с текстом, так сказать, объединять.

На картинке пример объединения даты с текстом в одной ячейке. Видите как выглядит наша дата? Это формат порядкового номера Excel.

What is a date in Excel?

A date is a number! And like any number (currency, percentage, decimal, …), you can customize your date format 👍

Dates are whole numbers

Usually, when you insert a date in a cell it is displayed in the format dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy.

Let’s say you have the date 01/01/2016 in a cell. If you change the cell’s format to Standard, the cell displays 42370 😕🤔

Explanation of the numbering

In Excel, a date is the number of days since 01/01/1900 (the first date in Excel).

So 42370 is the number of days between 01/01/1900 and 01/01/2016.

Date format

Dates can be displayed in different ways using the following 2 options (available in the Number Format dropdown in the main menu):

• Short Date
• Long Date

How to customize a date?

To customize a date:

1. Open the dialog box Custom Number (with the shortcut Ctrl + 1 or by clicking on the menu More number formats at the bottom of the number format dropdown)

1. In this dialog box, you select ‘Custom‘ in the Category list and write the date format code in ‘Type‘.

To format a date, you just write the parameter d, m or y a different number of times. For example,

• dd/mm/yyyy will display 01/01/2016
• dd mmm yyyy => 01 Jan 2016
• mmmm yyyy => January 2016
• dddd dd => Friday 01

In function of your language , the letter could be different:

• t for «tag» (day) in German
• j for «jour» (day) in French
• a for «año» (year) in Spanish

Don’t write text in your cell !!!

With dates, one of the most common mistakes is to write text inside the format code (1 January 2016 for example). Never do this in Excel ⛔⛔⛔

If you do this, the contents of the cell will be Text and not a number

• In Excel, text is always displayed on the left of a cell.
• A number or a date is displayed on the right.

If you want to display the month in letters, just change the month format of your date.

Different examples of custom date

The following document shows you the same date but in different formats. The code for each date is in column A.

Different writing of dates according to the format code

In the following document, you can see the impact of each format on the same date.

If you use Excel regularly, I’m sure you’ve come across dates and times in your cells. Data often has a record of when it was created or updated, so knowing how to work with this data is essential.

Here are three key skills that you’ll learn in this tutorial:

• How to format dates in Excel so that they appear in your preferred style
• Formulas to calculate the number of days, months, and years between two dates
• An Excel date formula to log today’s date, and a keyboard shortcut to add the current time

Microsoft Excel can basically do anything with data, if you just know how. This tutorial is another key step to adding skills to your Excel toolbelt. Let’s get started.

Excel Date and Time Formulas (Quick Video Tutorial)

This screencast will walk you through how to work with dates and times in Excel. I cover formatting dates to different styles, as well as Excel date formulas to calculate and work with dates. Make sure to download the free Excel workbook with exercises that I’ve attached to this tutorial.

Keep reading for a written reference guide on how to format dates and times in Excel, and work with them in your formulas. I’ll even share several tips that weren’t covered in the screencast.

Typing Dates and Times in Excel

For this part of the tutorial, use the tab titled «Typing Dates & Times» in the example workbook.

One of the keys to working with dates and times in Excel is capturing the data correctly. Here’s how to type dates and times in your Excel spreadsheets: 

1. How to Type Dates

I recommend typing dates in the same format that your system uses. For our American readers, a full date would be in the «day/month/year» format. European style dates are «month/day/year.»

When I’m typing dates, I always type in the full date with the month, day and year. If I only want to show the month and the year, I’ll simply format it that way (more on that in a minute.)

2. How to Type Times

It’s easy to type times in Excel. We can specify anything from just an hour of the day, to the exact second that something took place.

If I wanted to log the time as 4PM, I’d type «4 pm» into a cell in Excel and then press enter:

Notice once we press enter, Excel converts what we’ve typed into a hours : minutes: seconds data format. 

Here’s how to log a more specific time in your spreadsheet:

The key is to use colons to separate the section of the time data, and then add a space plus «AM» or «PM.»

3. How to Type Date-Time Together

You can also type combinations of dates and times in Excel for highly specific timestamps.

To type a date-time combination, simply use what we’ve already learned about typing dates, and typing times. 

Notice that Excel has converted the time to a 24 hour format when it’s used in conjunction with a date, by default. If you want to change the style of this date, keep reading.

Bonus: Excel Keyboard Shortcut for Current Time

One of my favorite Excel keyboard shortcuts inserts the current time into a spreadsheet. I use this formula often, when I’m noting the time I made a change to my data. Try it out:

Control + Shift + ;

Formatting Dates in Excel

For this part of the tutorial, use the tab titled «Formatting Dates & Times» in the example workbook.

What can you do when your dates are European style dates? That is, they’re in a day-month-year format, and you need to convert them to the more familiar month-day-year format?

In the screenshot above, what might surprise you is that all six of those cells contain exactly the same data — «1/22/2017.» What differs is how they’re formatted in Excel. The original data is identical, but it can be formatted to show in a variety of ways.

In most cases, it’s better to use formatting to modify the style of our dates. We don’t need to modify the data itself — just change how it’s presented.

Format Excel Cells

To change the appearance of our date and time data, make sure that you’re working on the Home tab of Excel. On the Ribbon (menu at the top of Excel), find the section labeled Number. 

There’s a small arrow in the lower right corner of the section. Click it to open the Format Cells menu.

The Format Cells menu has a variety of options for styling your dates and times. You could turn «1/22/2017» into «Sunday, January 22nd» with just formatting. Then, you could grab the format painter and change all of your cell styles.

Spend some time exploring this menu and trying out the different styles for your Excel dates and times.

Get Data From Dates and Times

Let’s say that we have a list of data that has very specific dates and times, and we want to get simpler versions of those formulas. Maybe we have a list of exact transaction dates, but we want to work with them at a higher level, grouping them by year or month.

You can get the year from a date with this Excel formula:

=YEAR(CELL)

To get just the month from a date cell, use the following Excel formula:

=MON(CELL)

Find the Difference Between Dates and Times

For this part of the tutorial, use the tab titled «DATEDIF» in the example workbook.

While formats are used to change how dates and times are presented, formulas in Excel are used to modify, calculate, or work with dates and times programatically.

The DATEDIF formula is powerful for calculating differences between days. Give the formula two dates and and it will return the number of days, months, and years between two dates. Let’s look at how to use it.

1. Days Between Dates

This Excel date formula will calculate the number of days between two dates:

=DATEDIF(A1,B1,"d")

The formula takes two cells, separated by commas, and then uses a «d» to calculate the difference in days. 

Here are some ideas for how you could use this Excel date formula to your advantage:

• Calculate the difference between today and your birthday to start a birthday countdown
• Use a DATEDIF to calculate the difference between two dates and divide your stock portfolio’s growth by the number of days to calculate the growth (or loss!) per day

2. Months Between Dates

DATEDIF also calculates the number of months between two dates. This date formula in Excel is very similar, but substitutes an «m» for «d» to calculate the difference in months:

=DATEDIF(A1,B1,"m")

However, there’s a quirk in the way Excel applies DATEDIF: it calculates whole months between dates. See the screenshot below.

To me, there are three months between January 1st and March 31st (all of January, all of February, and almost all of March.) However, because Excel uses whole months, it only considers January and February as completed, whole months, so the result is «2.» 

Here’s my preferred way to calculate the number of months between two dates. We’ll find the date difference in days, and then divide it by the average number of days in a month — 30.42 . 

=(DATEDIF(A1,B1,"d")/30.42)

Let’s apply our modified DATEDIF to two dates:

Much better. The output of 2.99 is very close to 3 full months, and this will be much more useful in future formulas.

The official Excel documentation has a complex method to calculate months between dates, but this is a simple and easy way to get it pretty close. Writing a good Excel formula is about finding the sweet spot of precision and simplicity, and this formula does both.

3. Years Between Dates

Finally, let’s calculate the number of years between two dates. The official way to calculate years between dates is with the following formula:

=DATEDIF(A1,B1,"y")

Notice that this is the same as our past DATEDIF formulas, but we’ve simply substituted the last part of the formula with «y» to calculate the number of years between two dates. Let’s see it in action:

Notice that this works like the DATEDIF for months: it counts only full years that have passed. I’d rather include partial years passing as well. Here’s a better DATEDIF for years:

=(DATEDIF(A1,B2,"d")/365)

Basically, we’re just getting the date difference in days, and then dividing it by 365 to calculate it as a year. Here’s the results:

DATEDIF is extremely powerful, but watch out for how it works: it’s going to only calculate full months or years that have passed by default. Use my modified versions for more precision in the results.

Bonus: Work Days Between Dates

The Excel date formulas covered above focus on the number of business days between dates. However, it’s sometimes helpful to just calculate the number of workdays (basically weekdays) between two dates.

In this case, we’ll use =NETWORKDAYS to calculate the number of workdays between two dates.

=NETWORKDAYS(A1,B1)

In the screenshot below, I show an example of using NETWORKDAYS. You can see the calendar showing how the formula calculated a result of «4.» 

If you have known holidays in the timeframe that you want to exclude, check out the official NETWORKDAYS documentation.

Recap and Keep Learning

Dates and times are ubiquitous to spreadsheets. Excel date formulas and formatting options are helpful. The techniques in this tutorial can take your Excel skills to the next level so that you can incorporate date-driven data seamlessly into your spreadsheets.

You’ve added one skill to your Excel toolbox — why stop here? Chain Excel formulas and skills to create powerful spreadsheets. To keep learning more about working with Excel spreadsheets, check out these other resources:

• IF Statements are logic built into your spreadsheet that show results based on conditions. You could combine an IF Statement with a date range to show data based on a date or time. Check out this tutorial to learn them.
• You could combine the VLOOKUP tutorial with date and time formulas to match values based on a date or time.
• Find and Remove Duplicates is an Excel function used in combination with date and time data, as it’s often one of the best bits of data to check for duplicates.

How do you work with calendar and time data in your Excel spreadsheets? Are there are any Excel date or time formulas that I’m missing from this tutorial that you use regularly? If so, let me know in the comments.

If you are storing dates in Excel worksheets, the default format picked by the Excel is the format set in Control Panel. So, if your control panel setting is “M/d/yyyy”, the Excel will format the 2nd Feb 2010 date as follows:

2/2/2010

If you require displaying the date like 2-Feb-2010 or August 1, 2015, etc. as entering dates you may change the settings in Excel easily.

In case you require permanently changing the date format that applies to current as well as future work in Excel,  you should change this in the control panel.

For the current worksheet, you may set the date formatting in different ways as described in the following section with examples.

Related Learning: Add / Subtract Dates in Excel

First Way: Change the date format by “Format Cell” option

The first way I am going to show you for changing the date format in Excel is using the “Format Cells” option. Follow these steps:

Step 1:

Right click on a cell or multiple cells where you require changing the date format. For the demo, I have entered a few dates and selected all:

Click the “Format Cells” option that should open the Format Cells dialog. You may also press the Ctrl+1 for opening this dialog in Windows. For Mac, the short key is Control+1 or Command+1.

Step 2:

In the Format Cells dialog, the Number tab should be pre-selected. If not, press Number tab. Under the Category, select Date. Towards the right side, you can see Type.

For the demo, I have selected 14-Mar-01 format and press OK. The resultant sheet after modifying date format is:

You are done!

An example of Mon-year format

The following example displays the dates in Mon-Year format e.g. Oct-92. For that, open the “Format Cells” dialog again –> Number –> Date and select Mar-01 format.

The above sheet displays the same dates as shown below:

Similarly, you may choose any date format as per the requirement of your scenario.

Interesting Topic: How to calculate age in Excel

Change date format by locale/location

If you wish to display the dates based on other languages then you may use the Locale (location) option in the “Format Cells” dialog.

See the following Excel sheet where I set the Arabic(UAE) option and one of its type:

The resultant sheet for the same dates as in the above examples:

Similarly, you may choose the following locale:

• Bashkir (Russia)
• Chinese (Simplified, Singapore)
• Corsican (France)
• Danish (Denmark)
• Various options for English
• Hindi (India)
• Japanese (Japan)
• And many more

Customizing the date format

By using the date formatting codes, you may customize the dates in a flexible way. For example, displaying the short month name (Jan, Feb) by using “mmm” or full month name by “mmmm”.

Similarly, showing the day names of the Week (Sun, Mon) by ddd or full names (Sunday, Monday) by dddd formatting code.

First, have look at an example of customizing the date which is followed by the list of date formatting codes.

Select and right click on date cells that you want to customize and go to “Format Cells”. Under the Number –> Category, select Date and choose the closest format you wish to display e.g. “Mar 14, 2001”.

Under the Category, press Custom now and towards the right side, you should see Type with various options. Either choose a format from the available list or enter the formatting code as required in the text box under Type.

For the example, I entered the “[$-409]mmmm dddd, d , yyyy;@” and see the resultant sheet:

List of formatting codes in Excel

Following is the formatting code list that you may use to customize the dates:

Day Codes

• d – for the day as 1-31
• dd – for the day as 01-31
• ddd – Sun, Mon, Tue
• dddd – Sunday, Monday, Tuesday etc.

Month Codes

• m – for Months as 1-12
• mm – 01-12
• mmm – Apr, May, Jun etc.
• mmmm – April, May, June, July etc.
• mmmmm – Month as the first letter of the month

Year Codes

• yy – 00-99
• yyyy – 2000, 2002, 2010 etc.

You may also want to learn: Convert Number and Date to Text

Quick way of displaying dates in default short and long formats

If you need to display dates in the short or long format with default settings, you may do it by following this:

Select the dates you wish to format in short/long date formats. For that, I chose the above example dates that were formatted in the custom format (see the last graphic):

Now, go to the Home tab and in the Number group, click the Number Format box as shown below:

Press the Short Date or Long Date format.

Changing date format in Excel by TEXT function

The Excel TEXT function can also be used for formatting dates. The TEXT function takes two arguments as shown below:

=TEXT(Value to convert into text, “Formatting code “)

Where the first argument can be a date cell, a number etc.

The second argument should sound familiar now; the formatting code that we just learned.

The TEXT function for formatting dates can particularly be useful if you want to keep the original date column in place and displaying another date-set based on those dates.

An example of Full month, day and year formatting example

For the example, the A column cells are assigned the Date of Birth dates in default format (US English) i.e. M/d/yyyy.

The corresponding B cells will display the dates in full month name, day and year in four digits format.

The TEXT formula:

=TEXT(A2,«mmmm dd, yyyy»)

The resultant sheet with formatted dates:

I have written the formula in the B2 cell only and copied to B6 cell as follows.

After you get the result in B2 cell by writing the above formula, bring the mouse over the right bottom of the B2 cell. As + sign appears with solid line, drag the handle till B6 and formula should be copied to other cells. The Excel will update the corresponding A cells with respect to B cells automatically.

How to use the DATEDIF function in Excel

Formatting dates in d, mmm, yy by TEXT function

The following example displays the dates in day with leading zero (01-12), short month name and year in two-digit format.

The TEXT formula:

The resultant sheet:

Displaying the day name as well

See the example below where day name (Sunday, Monday etc.) is also displayed along with day without leading zero, full month name and year in four digits.

The formula:

=TEXT(A2,«dddd d mmmm, yyyy»)

The dates after formatting:

The TEXT function is more than formatting dates; this is just one usage that I explained in above section. You may learn more about this function: The TEXT function in Excel

The example of concatenating formatted dates

Let us get more comfortable with date formatting and create more useful text strings as a result of joining different cells with constant literals.

In the example below, column A contains Names and column B date of births. In column C, I will use the CONCATENATE function where a text string is used and corresponding A and B cells are joined in the formula as follows:

=CONCATENATE(«DOB of  «,A2,,«: «,TEXT(B2,«dddd d mmmm, yyyy»))

This is what we get:

Formatting dates specific to language by TEXT function

As we have seen in the custom date formatting example, you can display Locale specific date style. I showed an example of displaying dates in Arabic style by using custom date option in “Format cells” dialog.

You may also specify the language code in the TEXT function for displaying dates based on locales.

See the following example where I displayed dates in various languages by using TEXT function.

The resultant sheet:

The following formulas are used for different languages:

For German:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0407]mmmm d, yyyy»)

French:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0040C]mmmm d, yyyy»)

Chinese (Traditional):

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0804]mmmm d, yyyy»)

Japanese:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0411]mmmm d, yyyy»)

Arabic:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0401]mmmm d, yyyy»)

For Hindi:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0439]mmmm d, yyyy»)

Urdu:

=TEXT(B2,«[$-0420]mmmm d, yyyy»)

List of language codes

Following is the list of language codes that you may use in the TEXT function for locale-specific date formatting:

Lang. Code          Language

• 042B                Armenian
• 044D                Assamese
• 082C                Azeri (Cyrillic)
• 042C                Azeri (Latin)
• 042D                Basque
• 0423                Belarusian
• 0445                Bengali
• 0402                Bulgarian
• 0804                Chinese (Simplified)
• 0404                Chinese (Traditional)
• 041A                Croatian
• 0405                Czech
• 0406                Danish
• 0413                Dutch
• 0C09                English (Australian)
• 1009                English (Canadian)
• 0809                English (U.K.)
• 0409                English (U.S.)
• 0464                Filipino
• 040B                Finnish
• 040C                French
• 0C0C                French (Canadian)
• 0462                Frisian
• 0467                Fulfulde
• 0456                Galician
• 0437                Georgian
• 0407                German
• 0C07                German (Austrian)
• 0807                German (Swiss)
• 0408                Greek
• 0447                Gujarati
• 040D                Hebrew
• 0439                Hindi
• 040E                Hungarian
• 0421                Indonesian
• 0410                Italian
• 0411                Japanese
• 044B                Kannada
• 0460                Kashmiri (Arabic)
• 0412                Korean
• 0476                Latin
• 0426                Latvian
• 0427                Lithuanian
• 042F                Macedonian FYROM
• 043E                Malay
• 044C                Malayalam
• 043A                Maltese
• 0458                Manipuri
• 044E                Marathi
• 0450                Mongolian
• 0461                Nepali
• 0414                Norwegian Bokmal
• 0463                Pashto
• 0429                Persian
• 0415                Polish
• 0416                Portuguese (Brazil)
• 0816                Portuguese (Portugal)
• 0446                Punjabi
• 0418                Romanian
• 0419                Russian
• 044F                Sanskrit
• 0C1A                Serbian (Cyrillic)
• 081A                Serbian (Latin)
• 0459                Sindhi
• 045B                Sinhalese
• 041B                Slovak
• 0424                Slovenian
• 0477                Somali
• 0C0A                Spanish
• 0441                Swahili
• 041D                Swedish
• 045A                Syriac
• 0428                Tajik
• 045F                Tamazight (Arabic)
• 085F                Tamazight (Latin)
• 0449                Tamil
• 044A                Telugu
• 041E                Thai
• 041F                Turkish
• 0442                Turkmen
• 0422                Ukrainian
• 0420                Urdu
• 0843                Uzbek (Cyrillic)
• 0443                Uzbek (Latin)
• 042A                Vietnamese
• 0478                Yi
• 046A                Yoruba

The example of calculating age in Years/Months and days

The following example uses the DATEDIF function for calculating the difference between current date and date of birth.

The current date is retrieved by using the TODAY() function. The Birth Date is stored in A column. The C column displays the formatted age in years, months and number of days.

The DATEDIF formula:

=DATEDIF(A3,TODAY(),«y») &» Years and «&DATEDIF(A3,TODAY(),«ym») &» Month(s) and « &DATEDIF(A3,TODAY(),«md») &» Days»

The resultant sheet:

For learning about the DATEDIF function, visit this tutorial: Excel DATEDIF function and formulas.

You are not limited to using Excel’s built-in date formats. You can create your desired custom date formats in more than one way. You can even display your dates in a different language, change the appearance and order in which your dates are shown, add display color, and much more. In this article, you can learn how to format dates using a built-in format and how to format dates with use of the TEXT() function.

Using the DATE function available in Microsoft Excel is pretty simple as the function itself is very intuitive and self-explanatory. This function requires several variables to work, such as year, month and day, which can be inserted directly or entered as references to other cells with these variables. The Date function has the following syntax: DATE( year, month, day ). I have used the DATE function in many of my Calendars Templates, Project Gantt Chart, etc.

The DATE function can be used as a part of other functions or custom formulas and can also use other functions within for entering required variables. For example, one of the commonly used together with DATE functions is TODAY(), which returns the current date and can be used inside the DATE function and make it more dynamic.

The question that I have often been asked is how to format dates in the cell to display dates in alphanumerical format? Another issue is how to format dates using the TEXT() function? Additionally, why the date that is shown is either partly correct or displaying error when the spreadsheet is used in the non-English version of Microsoft Excel?

Examples

To follow along and see the examples described on this page in action, download the Excel file below.
Download the Example File (custom-date-formats.xlsx)

Change the Date Appearance with Format Cells Option

There a few methods in which you can approach these problems. The first method applies to scenarios where the content of the cell has to be displayed in some specific way, or you want to enter custom formatting. You can easily format the cell to show the date the way you need by following these steps:

1. Select the cell (or multiple cells) you want to format
2. Right-click on a cell (or cells) and select “Format Cells…” or use Ctrl+1 shortcut
3. In the Format Cells dialog box choose the Date from the categories on the left
4. Using the Locale drop-down list, choose a country or region of the date format you want to use
5. Choose the desired format type in the Type section, then click OK to apply the format

The steps to apply custom formatting to the date entered into a cell or multiple cells are very similar.

1. Select the cell (or multiple cells) you want to format
2. Right-click on a cell (or cells) and select “Format Cells…” or use Ctrl+1 shortcut
3. In the Format Cells window choose Custom from the categories on the left
4. Select the desired formatting from the list in the Type section or enter your custom format type

I won’t go through all custom formatting types that can be entered here as there are quite a few of them and it is quite frankly outside the scope of this article, but I will briefly touch upon the few of them. If you want to learn about all possible formatting types that you can create in Excel, please let me know in the comments below.

Here are some Date Format examples:

Format Code	Cell Value	Cell Appearance
dd/mm/yyyy	16/11/2018	16/11/2018
mm/dd/yyyy	16/11/2018	11/16/2018
mm-dd-yy	16/11/2018	11-16-18
mmmm d, yyyy	16/11/2018	November 16, 2018
d mmmm yyyy	16/11/2018	16 November 2018
d mmmm yyyy (dddd)	16/11/2018	16 November 2018 (Friday)
mm•dd•yyyy	16/11/2018	11•16•2018
“Date:” d mmmm yyyy	16/11/2018	Date: 16 November 2018

You can enter your custom format type by clicking in the area as shown on the image above. For example, if you want to display the date as November 16, 2018, you would enter the following: mmmm dd, yyyy. Check the table below for more date format options.

Format Code	Description
dddd	Full day of week names displayed as Monday-Sunday
ddd	Abbreviated day of week names displayed as Mon-Sun
dd	Days displayed with leading 0 as 01-31
d	Days displayed as 1-31
mmmmm	First letter of the month J-D
mmmm	Month Names displayed in full as January-December
mmm	Abbreviated month name displayed as Jan-Dec
mm	Month number displayed with leading 0 as 01-12
m	Month number displayed as 1-12
yyyy	Year displayed in four digit format: 2018, 2019, etc.
y or yy	Year displayed in two digit format: 18, 19, etc.

In this table, you can view some examples that you can apply to change the appearance of the date in the cell.

Format Code	Date Appearance
d mmm ddd	6 Sep Thu
d mmm dddd	6 Sep Thursday
d mmm yyyy (dddd)	6 Sep 2018 (Thursday)
d mmm	6 Sep
d mmmm	6 September
dd/mm/yyyy	06/09/2018
dd-mm-yyyy	06-09-2018
d/m/yy	6/9/18
m/d/y	9/6/18
d mmm yy	6 Sep 18
mmm d, yy	Sep 6, 18
d mmmm yyyy	6 September 2018
mmmm d, yyyy	September 6, 2018
[$-C0A]mmmm d, yyyy	febrero 6, 2018 (Spanish)

Additionally, the date can also appear in a different language by applying the language code to your formatting. For example, if you use the following language code [$-413] for Dutch, your date will appear in the Dutch language despite the system language settings of your computer. Language format can come in very handy, especially for use in spreadsheets where you want to display dates in various languages. I have posted the table with all applicable language codes at the bottom of this article.

All custom formatting applied via Excel built-in cell format option can be overwritten by conditional formatting or by accidental changes.

Format Dates with TEXT Function in Excel

If you are using the TEXT() function in your spreadsheet as a part of a formula or on its own, for applying a custom format to the date output, you can set the desired format right within the TEXT() function. To instruct the TEXT() function, you can use the same code that I have provided in the table above.

 =TEXT(A1,"mmmm d, yyyy") 

The formula above assumes that the date is in A1 (9/10/2018). The TEXT() function will apply the specified format to its output regardless of the initial format of the A1. So you should end up with the following output: September 9, 2018.

The output of the TEXT() function with a specified format cannot be changed with conditional formatting, which could sometimes be very useful. For example, you may not want to allow any system changes to override the format of your spreadsheet, such as system language changes. TEXT() function provides the ability to lock your set formats and can, to some extent prevent changes in the output.

One of many pros of using TEXT() function for setting a format of the date is the ability to set the different language for the output. You do this by including the language code with brackets to the format string, as shown in the example below

 =TEXT(A1,"[$-C0A]mmmm d, yyyy") 

Besides, you can make the TEXT() function even more dynamic by taking format string out of the worksheet function and placing it into any cell, then reference that cell in the format portion of the TEXT() function. Now you can change the format of the date by modifying the format string in the cell, without altering the TEXT() function.

 =TEXT(A1,C2) 

The formula in the example above assumes that A1 contains date and C2 includes the desired format string. The output of the TEXT() function will change every time you modify the format string in C2.

Custom Date Formats for Chart Labels and Axes

As with almost everything else in Excel, few different methods can be used to apply a custom format to the dates in the chart axes and labels. The first method is to add the custom date format from the Format Axis pane. You should notice that the Linked to source box is unchecked.

You can also follow the other methods to add a custom format to the date. For example, you can modify the format of the data source first then apply this format to your chart axis by checking the Link to source box in Format Axis pane.

Any formats applied with TEXT() function to the data source whether in cells or chart axes, cannot be overridden.

Custom Location Codes for Dates

The table below includes all custom location codes for dates. You can use these location codes at the beginning of the format code string in square brackets for displaying month names and weekday names in other languages. The location/language code contains either three or four digits and/or letters, but if the leading digit is a zero, you do not need to include it.

Format Code	Language/Location
0436	Afrikaans
041C	Albanian
045E	Amharic
0401	Arabic
042B	Armenian
044D	Assamese
082C	Azeri (Cyrillic)
042C	Azeri (Latin)
042D	Basque
0423	Belarusian
0445	Bengali
0402	Bulgarian
0403	Catalan
045C	Cherokee
0804	Chinese (Simplified)
0404	Chinese (Traditional)
041A	Croatian
0405	Czech
0406	Danish
0465	Dhivehi
0413	Dutch
0466	Edo
0C09	English (Australian)
1009	English (Canadian)
0809	English (U.K.)
0409	English (U.S.)
0425	Estonian
0438	Faeroese
0464	Filipino
040B	Finnish
040C	French
0C0C	French (Canadian)
0462	Frisian
0467	Fulfulde
0456	Galician
0437	Georgian
0407	German
0C07	German (Austrian)
0807	German (Swiss)
0408	Greek
0447	Gujarati
0468	Hausa
0475	Hawaiian
040D	Hebrew
0439	Hindi
040E	Hungarian
0469	Ibibio
040F	Icelandic
0470	Igbo
0421	Indonesian
045D	Inuktitut
0410	Italian
0411	Japanese
044B	Kannada
0471	Kanuri
0460	Kashmiri (Arabic)
043F	Kazakh
0457	Konkani
0412	Korean
0440	Kyrgyz
0476	Latin
0426	Latvian
0427	Lithuanian
042F	Macedonian FYROM
043E	Malay
044C	Malayalam
043A	Maltese
0458	Manipuri
044E	Marathi
0450	Mongolian
0461	Nepali
0414	Norwegian Bokmal
0814	Norwegian Nynorsk
0448	Oriya
0472	Oromo
0463	Pashto
0429	Persian
0415	Polish
0416	Portuguese (Brazil)
0816	Portuguese (Portugal)
0446	Punjabi
0418	Romanian
0419	Russian
044F	Sanskrit
0C1A	Serbian (Cyrillic)
081A	Serbian (Latin)
0459	Sindhi
045B	Sinhalese
041B	Slovak
0424	Slovenian
0477	Somali
0C0A	Spanish
0441	Swahili
041D	Swedish
045A	Syriac
0428	Tajik
045F	Tamazight (Arabic)
085F	Tamazight (Latin)
0449	Tamil
0444	Tatar
044A	Telugu
041E	Thai
0873	Tigrigna (Eritrea)
0473	Tigrigna (Ethiopia)
041F	Turkish
0442	Turkmen
0422	Ukrainian
0420	Urdu
0843	Uzbek (Cyrillic)
0443	Uzbek (Latin)
042A	Vietnamese
0478	Yi
043D	Yiddish
046A	Yoruba

Other Notes about Custom Date Formats

You can quickly delete any custom formats created with built-in Format Cells option. To do so, open the Format Cells dialog box, select Custom from the categories on the left, select the custom format from the list then click Delete then click OK. All values that use the custom format which you want to delete will revert to the General format.

All custom date formats that you create belong to the workbook in which they were created. You will have to recreate the custom formats again in the new workbook or copy/paste the formatting from the file where you have initially created them. You can achieve this by copying and pasting the formatted cell, by copying the format code and pasting this code into the Format Cells dialog box or by using the Format Painter tool.

References

• Excel Custom Number Format by Mynda Treacy, Excel MVP (MyOnlineTrainingHub.com)
• Excel TEXT Function by Dave and Lisa Bruns (ExcelJet.net)

Return to Excel Formulas List

Download Example Workbook

Download the example workbook

This tutorial will demonstrate how to change date formats in Excel and Google Sheets.

Excel Date Format

In spreadsheets, dates are stored as serial numbers, each whole number represents an unique day. When you type a date into a cell, the date is converted to it’s corresponding serial number and the number format is changed to date.

After a date is entered in Excel as a date, there are several ways to change the formatting:

Change Date Formats

Short Date / Long Date

The Ribbon Home > Number menu allows you to change between Short Dates (default) and Long Dates:

Format Cells Menu – Date

The Format Cells Menu gives you numerous preset formats:

Notice that in the ‘Sample’ area you can see the impact the new number format will have on the active cell.

The Format Cells Menu can be accessed with the shortcut CTRL + 1 or by clicking this button:

Custom Number Formatting

The Custom section of the Format Cells Menu allows you the ability to create your own number formats:

To set custom number formatting for dates, you’ll need to specify how to display days, months, and / or years. Use this table as guide:

You can use the above examples to only display a day, month, or year. Or you can combine them:

Dates Stored as Text

Date as Text

To store a date as text, type an apostrophe (‘) in front of the date as you’re typing the date:

However, as long as the date is stored as text you’ll be unable to change the formatting like a normal date.

You can convert the date stored as text, back to a date using the DATEVALUE or VALUE Functions:

=DATEVALUE(B3)

Text Function

The TEXT Function is a great way to display a date as text.  The TEXT Function allows you to display dates in formats just like the Custom Number Formatting discussed previously.

=TEXT(B3,C3)

You can combine the TEXT Function with a string of text like this:

="Today's date is: "&TEXT(TODAY(),"m/d/yyyy")

Google Sheets Date Formatting

Google Sheets makes formatting dates slightly easier. With Google Sheets, you simply need to navigate to the ‘More date and time formats:

The menu looks like this:

You’ll be able to select from a wide range of presets. Or you can utilize the drop-downs on top to select your desired format: