Excel if date range from to

The IF function is one of the most useful Excel functions. It is used to test a condition and return one value if the condition is TRUE and another if it is FALSE.

One of the most common applications of the IF function involves the comparison of values.

These values can be numbers, text, or even dates. However, using the IF statement with date values is not as intuitive as it may seem.

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate some ways in which you can use the IF function with date values.

Syntax and Usage of the IF Function in Excel

The syntax for the IF function is as follows:

IF(logical_test, [value_if_true], [value_if_false])

Here,

• logical_test is the condition or criteria that you want the IF function to test. The result of this parameter is either TRUE or FALSE
• value_if_true is the value that you want the IF function to return if the logical_test evaluates to TRUE
• value_if_false is the value that you want the IF function to return if the logical_test evaluates to FALSE

For example, say you want to write a statement that will return the value “yes” if the value in cell reference A2 is equal to 10, and “no” if it’s anything but 10.

You can then use the following IF function for this scenario:

=IF(A2=10,"yes","no")

Comparing Dates in Excel (Using Operators)

Unlike numbers and strings, comparison operators, when used with dates, have a slightly different meaning.

Here are some of the comparison operators that you can use when comparing dates, along with what they mean:

Operator	What it Means When Using with Dates
<	Before the given date
=	Same as the date with which we are comparing
>	After the given date
<=	Same as or before the given date
>=	Same as or after the given date

It may look like IF formulas for dates are the same as IF functions for numeric or text values, since they use the same comparison operators.

However, it’s not as simple as that.

Unfortunately, unlike other Excel functions, the IF function cannot recognize dates.

It interprets them as regular text values.

So you cannot use a logical test such as “>05/07/2021” in your IF function, as it will simply see the value “05/07/2021” as text.

Here are a few ways in which you can incorporate date values into your IF function’s logical_test parameter.

Using the IF Function with DATEVALUE Function

If you want to use a date in your IF function’s logical test, you can wrap the date in the DATEVALUE function.

This function converts a date in text format to a serial number that Excel can recognize as a date.

If you put a date within quotes, it is essentially a text or string value.

When you pass this as a parameter to the DATEVALUE function, it takes a look at the text inside the double quotes, identifies it as a date and then converts it to an actual Excel date value.

Let us say you have a date in cell A2, and you want cell B2 to display the value “done” if the date comes before or on the same date as “05/07/2021” and display “not done” otherwise.

You can use the IF function along with DATEVALUE in cell B2 as follows:

=IF(A2<DATEVALUE("05/07/2021"),"done","not done")

Here’s a screenshot to illustrate the effect of the above formula:

Using the IF Function with the TODAY Function

If you want to compare a date with the current date, you can use the IF function with the TODAY function in the logical test.

Let’s say you have a date in cell A2 and you want cell B2 to display the value “done” if it is a date before today’s date.

If not, you want let’s say you want to display the value “not done”. You can use the IF function along with the TODAY function in cell B2 as follows:

=IF(A2<TODAY(),"done","not done")

Here’s a screenshot to illustrate the effect of the above formula (assuming the current date is 05/08/2021):

Using the IF Function with Future or Past Dates

An interesting thing about dates in Excel is that you can perform addition and subtraction operations with them too.

This is because dates are basically stored in Excel as serial numbers, starting from the date Jan 1, 1900.

Each day after that is represented by one whole number.

So, the serial number 2 corresponds to Jan 2, 1900, and so on.

This means that adding n number of days to a date is equivalent to adding the value n to the serial number that the date represents.

If TODAY() is 05/07/2021, then TODAY()+5 is five days after today, or 05/12/2021. Similarly, TODAY()-3 is three days before today or 05/04/2021.

Let’s say you have a date in cell A2 and you want cell B2 to mark it as “within range” if it is within 15 days from the current date.

If not, you want to show “out of range”. You can use the IF function along with the TODAY function in cell B2 as follows:

=IF(A2<TODAY()+15,"within range","out of range")

Here’s a screenshot to illustrate the effect of the above formula (assuming the current date is 05/08/2021):

Points to Remember

Having discussed different ways to use dates with the IF function, here are some important points to remember:

1. Instead of hardcoding the dates into the IF function’s logical test parameter, you can store the date in a separate cell and refer to it with a cell reference. For example, instead of typing =IF(A2<”05/07/2021”,”done”,”not done”), you can store the date 05/07/2021 in a cell, say B2 and type the formula: =IF(A2<B2,”done”,”not done”).

1. Alternatively, you can use the DATEVALUE function as explained in the first part of this tutorial.

1. Another neat technique that you can use is to simply add a zero to the date (which has been enclosed in double quotes). So you can type: =IF(A2<”05/07/2021”+0,”done”,”not done”). This will make Excel take the date inside double quotes as a serial number, and use it in the logical test without having its value changed.

In this tutorial, I showed you some great techniques to use the IF function with dates. I hope the tips covered here were useful for you.

Other articles you may also like:

• Multiple If Statements in Excel (Nested Ifs, AND/OR) with Examples
• How to use Excel If Statement with Multiple Conditions Range [AND/OR]
• How to Convert Month Number to Month Name in Excel
• Why are Dates Shown as Hashtags in Excel? Easy Fix!
• How to Convert Serial Numbers to Date in Excel
• How to Get the First Day Of The Month In Excel?

Alternative Answer

Use VLOOKUP to potentially ease your future formula maintenance. In an unused location, set up a table that has your break point ranges and associated return values. For this example I used the following:

Technically speaking column G is not required, but it can be easier for some people to read.

Now assuming your dates are in Column A, you can use the following formula in B2 copying down:

=TODAY()-A2

and in C2 use the following look up formula and copy down to get your desired results:

=VLOOKUP(B2,$F$3:$H$6,3,1)

now if you are not keen on generating the extra column for calculate the number of days, you can substitute that first formula into the second to get:

=VLOOKUP(TODAY()-A2,$F$3:$H$6,3,1)

place the above in B2 instead and copy down.

The following is an example of the first approach:

The main advantage to this approach is you can manipulate the lookup table easily changing breakpoints, wording of results etc easily without touching your formula (when done right)

if you have the potential for negative days, instead of returning an error, you could wrap the lookup formula in an IFERROR function to give a custom message or result.

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,$F$3:$H$6,3,1),"In the Future")

If you have a list of dates and then want to compare to these dates with a specified date to check if those dates is greater than or less than that specified date. You can use the IF function in combination with logical operators and DATEVALUE function in Microsoft excel.

Excel IF function combining with DATEVALUE function

Since that Excel cannot recognize the date formats and just interprets them as a text string. So you need to use DATAVALUE function and let Excel think that it is a Date value. For example: DATEVALUE(“11/3/2018”). Now we can write down the following IF formula with Dates.

=IF(B1<DATEVALUE(“11/3/2018”),”good”,”bad”)

The above excel IF formula will check the date value in Cell B1 if it is less than another specified date(11/3/2018), if the test is TRUE, then return “good”, otherwise return “bad”

Excel IF function combining with DATE function

You can also use DATE function in an Excel IF statement to compare dates, like the below IF formula:

=IF(B1<=DATE(2018,11,3),”good”,””)

The above IF formula will check if the value in cell B1 is less than or equal to 11/3/2018 and show the returned value in cell C1, Otherwise show nothing.

Excel IF function combining with TODAY function

If you want to compare the current date with the specified date in the past, you can use IF function in combination with TODAY function in Excel. Like the following IF formula:

=IF(B1>TODAY(), “good”,”bad”)

We also can use the complex logical test using Today function, like this: B1-TODAY>10, it will check the date value in one cell if it is more than 10 days from now. Let’s combine this logical test in the IF formula as follow:

=IF(B1-TODAY()>10,”good”,”bad”)

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Data analysis in Excel often involves working with dates.

A common thing many Excel users need to check when working with dates is whether a date is between two given dates.

A simple use case of this could be when you need to check whether the date of submission of a report was within the given dates or not. Based on this, you can highlight what reports were submitted after the deadline.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to check if the date is between two given dates or not.

Using Nested IF Formula

One of the easiest ways to check whether a date is in between two given dates is by using a simple if formula.

And since we need to check for two conditions, we would need to use two if formulas.

And when you use an IF formula within another IF formula, that is called the nested IF construct.

Below I have a data set where I have the project start date and project end date in column A and column B respectively. And then I have the project submission date in column C.

Now I want to check whether the project submission date was between the project start and project end date or not.

This can easily be done using the below nested IF formula:

=IF(C2>=A2,IF(C2<=B2,"In Range","Out of Range"),"Out of Range")

The above formula would return ‘In Range’ if the date lies in between the two given dates, and it would return ‘Out of Range’ in case the date is either before the project started or after the project end date.

Now let me quickly explain how this formula works.

I first used and if formula to check whether the date is after the project start date or not.

Based on these criteria, I need to specify what should the formula do in case this condition is true, and what should the formula do in case the condition is not true.

But since I have two conditions to check, immediately after I checked the first condition, I use the second IF function to check for the other condition (which is whether the date is before the project end date or not).

Since the IF function takes 3 arguments (the condition, value when the condition is True, and value in the condition is False), for the second IF function, I specify ‘In Range’ as the second argument, as it has satisfied both the conditions, and I specify out of range as the third argument, because it satisfies the first if condition, but it fails the second if condition.

And then finally, I specify ‘Out of Range’ as the second argument for the first IF function (which means that the condition in the first IF function failed, and hence it did not go to the second if function and instead returned the second argument of the first IF function).

Since I had only two conditions to check, I have used two if functions where the second function is nested within the first one. In case you have more than two conditions to check you can further nest these if functions (although it tends to get a bit complicated after a few)

Also read: Avoid Nested IF Function in Excel…VLOOKUP to Rescue

Using IF + AND Formula

While many Excel users are quite comfortable using the IF formula, when you have multiple conditions to check, I prefer using the combination of IF and AND formula instead.

Within the AND formula, you can check for multiple conditions, and can specify what result you should get in case all the conditions are true, and the result you should get in case any of these conditions are FALSE.

Let’s again take the same data set where I have the project started and project end date in column A and column B, and I have the project submission date in column C.

Below is the formula I can use to check whether the submission date lies between the project start date and project end date or not:

=IF(AND(C2>=A2,C2<=B2),"In Range","Out of Range")

The above formula checks for both the conditions and it would return ‘In Range’ in case the submission date is in between the start and the end date, and it would return ‘Out of Range’ in case the submission date is before the project started or after the project end date.

Note that I have still used an IF function in the above formula, however, I didn’t have the need to use two if functions.

Since I had to check for both the conditions, I did that using the AND function instead.

The AND function would return TRUE if both the conditions are true, and it would return FALSE if any or both the conditions are false.

And since I needed a more descriptive output instead of a simple TRUE or FALSE, I have used an IF function where it would give me ‘In Range’ in case the result is TRUE and ‘Out of Range’ in case the result is FALSE.

Check If the Date Occurs on Weekend

A common use case when working with dates in project management is to identify whether a date occurs on a weekend or not.

If you’re checking this manually, you would check whether a date is a Saturday or Sunday.

But when working with dates in Excel, you can use the WEEKDAY function that can easily do this for you.

Below I have a data set where I have some dates in column A, and I want to check whether these dates occur on a weekend or not.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I would consider Saturday and Sunday as the weekend days.

Below is the formula that will do this for you:

=WEEKDAY(A2,2)>5

If the date occurs on a Saturday or Sunday, it will give you a TRUE, else it will give a FALSE.

The above WEEKDAY formula checks the serial number of the date, and returns a number that corresponds to the weekday number for that date. So if it’s a Monday, it would return 1, if it’s a Tuesday it would return 2, and so on.

Since the condition that I’m checking is whether the weekday result is more than 5, it would return TRUE if the date is on a weekend, and it would return FALSE if it’s on a weekday.

If you want the result to be more meaningful, you can use the below if formula, which will return ‘Weekday’ in case the date occurs on a weekday and ‘Weekend’ in case the date occurs on a weekend.

=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)>5,"Weekend","Weekday")

Issues When Checking Whether a Date is in Between two dates

So far, I’ve shown you a couple of scenarios where you can check whether a date lies between two given dates.

In all the formulas, the underlying principle is to compare the value of the given date with the start and the end date. If the value of the given date, is in between the start and the end date, then it occurs in between these two dates, else it does not.

However, in some cases, you may see some unexpected results.

In this section, I cover some common pitfalls that you need to be aware of when comparing dates in Excel:

Dates Need to Be in the Right Format

Dates and time values are stored as numbers in the back-end in Excel. So when you compare two dates, you’re essentially comparing two numbers.

You may think that the date looks nothing like a number (for example 01 January 2023), but remember that dates are formatted to show up differently in the cell in Excel, while in the back-end these are still numbers.

For example, a cell may show 01 January 2023, but in the backend, the value of this cell would be 44927 (which indicates the total number of days that have elapsed after 01 Jan 1900).

Now, if your dates are in the right format, all is well.

But there is also a possibility that your date is in a format that Excel does not recognize as a date, which means that instead of a number in the back end, it ends up being considered a text string.

For example, Jan 01, 2023, is not a valid date format in Excel.

So if you have this in a cell in excel, it would be considered a text string, and using this to compare it with other dates can give you incorrect results.

Bottom line – When comparing dates in Excel, make sure that the dates are in the right format

Also read: How to Change Date Format In Excel?

Dates May have a Time Part that’s Hidden

Just like dates, time values are also stored as numbers in the backend in Excel.

While a whole number would indicate a full day, the decimal part would indicate the portion of the day or the time value for that day.

For example, if you have 01-01-2023 18:00:00 in a cell in Excel, in the backend it would be 44927.75, where 44927 means 01-01-2023 and 0.75 means 18:00:00

Now, here’s the problem that you can encounter when checking whether a date lies in between two given dates.

You may clearly see that the date is in between the two given dates, but Excel may give you a different result.

This can happen because most of the time when people work with dates and times, the time portion is hidden so that you only see the date but you do not see the time value.

Below I have a simple example where I have the same date in cells A1 and B1, but when I compare these two cells, it tells me these are not the same.

While you can clearly see that these dates are exactly the same, what you do not see is that there is a time value in cell A1 that is hidden so you do not see it. But when excel compares these two cells, it considers these as different (which it rightly should).

While this is not such a common scenario, if this happens, it can sometimes stump even advanced Excel users.

In this tutorial, I showed you a couple of simple formulas that you can use to check whether a date is between two given dates or not.

I’ve also mentioned some of the pitfalls you should be aware of when comparing dates and Excel.

I hope you found this Excel tutorial useful.

Other Excel Tutorials you may also like:

• Calculate the Number of Months Between Two Dates in Excel
• How to Calculate the Number of Days Between Two Dates in Excel
• How to Add or Subtract Days to a Date in Excel
• How to Stop Excel from Changing Numbers to Dates Automatically
• How to Add Months to Date in Excel
• How to Get the Number of Days in a Month in Excel?
• Get Day Name from Date in Excel