Serial date to date excel

Excel stores date and time values as serial numbers in the back end.

This means that while you may see a date such as “10 January 2020” or “01/10/2020” in a cell, in the back-end, Excel is storing that as a number. This is useful as it also allows users to easily add/subtract date and time in Excel.

In Microsoft Excel for Windows, “01 Jan 1900” is stored as 1, “02 Jan 1900” is stored as 2, and so on.

Below, both columns have the same numbers, but Column A shows numbers and Column B shows the date that’s represented by that number.

This is also the reason that sometimes you may expect a date in a cell but end up seeing a number. I see this happening all the time when I download data from databases or web-based tools.

It happens when the cell format is set to show a number as a number instead of a date.

So how can we convert these serial numbers into dates?

That’s what this tutorial is all about.

In this tutorial, I would show you two really easy ways to convert serial numbers into dates in Excel

Note: Excel for Windows uses the 1900 date system (which means that 1 would represent 01 Jan 1900, while Excel for Mac uses the 1904 date system (which men’s that 1 would represent 01 Jan 1904 in Excel in Mac)

So let’s get started!

Convert Serial Numbers to Dates Using Number Formatting

The easiest way to convert a date serial number into a date is by changing the formatting of the cells that have these numbers.

You can find some of the commonly used date formats in the Home tab in the ribbon

Let me show you how to do this.

Using the In-Built Date Format Options in the Ribbon

Suppose you have a data set as shown below, and you want to convert all these numbers in column A into the corresponding date that it represents.

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Select the cells that have the number that you want to convert into a date
2. Click the ‘Home’ tab
3. In the ‘Number’ group, click on the Number Formatting drop-down
4. In the drop-down, select ‘Long Date’ or Short Date’ option (based on what format would you want these numbers to be in)

That’s it!

The above steps would convert the numbers into the selected date format.

The above steps have not changed the value in the cell, only the way it’s being displayed.

Note that Excel picks up the short date formatting based on your system’s regional setting. For example, if you’re in the US, then the date format would be MM/DD/YYYY, and if you are in the UK, then the date format would be DD/MM/YYYY.

While this is a quick method to convert serial numbers into dates, it has a couple of limitations:

• There are only two date formats – short date and long date (and that too in a specific format). So, if you want to only get the month and the year and not the day, you won’t be able to do that using these options.
• You cannot show date as well as time using the formatting options in the drop-down. You can either choose to display the date or the time but not both.

So, if you need more flexibility in the way you want to show dates in Excel, you need to use the Custom Number Formatting option (covered next in this tutorial).

Sometimes when you convert a number into a date in Excel, instead of the date you may see some hash signs (something like #####). this happens when the column width is not enough to accommodate the entire date. In such a case, just increase the width of the column.

Creating a Custom Date Format Using Number Formatting Dialog Box

Suppose you have a data set as shown below and you want to convert the serial numbers in column A into dates in the following format – 01.01.2020

Note that this option is not available by default in the ribbon method that we covered earlier.

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Select the cells that have the number that you want to convert into a date
2. Click the ‘Home’ tab
3. In the Numbers group, click on the dialog box launcher icon (it’s a small tilted arrow at the bottom right of the group)
4. In the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box that opens up, make sure the ‘Number’ tab selected
5. In the ‘Category’ options on the left, select ‘Date’
6. Select the desired formatting from the ‘Type’ box.
7. Click OK

The above steps would convert the numbers into the selected date format.

As you can see, there are more date formatting options in this case (as compared with the short and long date we got with the ribbon).

And in case you do not find the format you are looking for, you can also create your own date format.

For example, let’s say that I want to show the date in the following format – 01/01/2020 (which is not already an option in the format cells dialog box).

Here is how I can do this:

1. Select the cells that have the numbers that you want to convert into a date
2. Click the Home tab
3. In the Numbers group, click on the dialog box launcher icon (it’s a small tilt arrow at the bottom right of the group)
4. In the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box that opens up, make sure the ‘Number’ tab selected
5. In the ‘Category’ options on the left, select ‘Custom’
6. In the field on the right, enter

   mm/dd/yyyy

   

7. Click OK

The above steps would change all the numbers into the specified number format.

With custom format, you get full control and it allows you to show the date in whatever format you want. You can also create a format where it shows the date as well time in the same cell.

For example, in the same example, if you want to show date as well as time, you can use the below format:

mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm AM/PM

Below is the table that shows the date format codes you can use:

Date Formatting Code	How it Formats the Date
m	Shows the Month as a number from 1–12
mm	Show the months as two-digit numbers from 01–12
mmm	Shows the Month as three-letter as in Jan–Dec
mmmm	Shows the Months full name as in January–December
mmmmm	Shows the Month name first alphabet as in J-D
d	Shows Days as 1–31
dd	Shows Days as 01–31
ddd	Shows Days as Sun–Sat
dddd	Shows Days as Sunday–Saturday
yy	Shows Years as 00–99
yyyy	Shows Years as 1900–9999

Also read: How to Convert Text to Date in Excel (Easy Formulas)

Convert Serial Numbers to Dates Using TEXT Formula

The methods covered above work by changing the formatting of the cells that have the numbers.

But in some cases, you may not be able to use these methods.

For example, below I have a data set where the numbers have a leading apostrophe – which converts these numbers into text.

If you try and using the inbuilt options to change the formatting of the cells with this data set, it would not do anything. This is because Excel does not consider these as numbers, and since dates for numbers, Excel refuses your wish to format these.

In such a case, you can either convert these text to numbers and then use the above-covered formatting methods, or use another technique to convert serial numbers into dates – using the TEXT function.

The TEXT function takes two arguments – the number that needs to be formatted, and the format code.

Suppose you have a data set as shown below, and you want to convert all the numbers and column A into dates.

Below the formula that could do that:

=TEXT(A2,"MM/DD/YYYY")

Note that in the formula I have specified the date formatting to be in the MM/DD/YYYY format. If you need to use any other formatting, you can specify the code for it as the second argument of the TEXT formula.

You can also use this formula to show the date as well as the time.

For example, if you want the final result to be in the format – 01/01/2020 12:00 AM, use the below formula:

=TEXT(A2,"mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm AM/PM")

In the above formula, I have added the time format as well so if there are decimal parts in the numbers, it would be shown as the time in hours and minutes.

If you only want the date (and not the underlying formula), convert the formulas into static values by using paste special.

One big advantage of using the TEXT function to convert serial numbers into dates is that you can combine the TEXT formula result with other formulas. For example, you can combine the resulting date with the text and show something such as – The Due Date is 01-Jan-2020 or The Deadline is 01-Jan-2020

Note: Remember dates and time are stored as numbers, where every integer number would represent one full day and the decimal part would represent that much part of the day. So 1 would mean 1 full day and  0.5 would mean half-a-day or 12 hours.

So these are two simple ways you can use to convert serial numbers to dates in Microsoft Excel.

I hope you found this tutorial useful!

Other Excel tutorials you may like:

• How to SUM values between two dates (using SUMIFS formula)
• How to Stop Excel from Changing Numbers to Dates Automatically
• How to Remove Time from Date/Timestamp in Excel
• Calculate the Number of Months Between Two Dates in Excel
• Excel DATEVALUE Function – Convert Date in Text into Serial Date Formats
• How to Convert Numbers to Text in Excel
• How to Compare Dates in Excel (Greater/Less Than, Mismatches)
• Convert Scientific Notation to Number or Text in Excel
• How To Convert Date To Serial Number In Excel?

When you bring in data from other sources, it is not uncommon to get the dates in the form of serial numbers, like 42088.

Moreover, Excel inherently stores dates in the form of integers and then formats it according to the required date settings.

So when you apply certain formulas to dates or when you format a cell in the Number format, you often end up getting a serial number.

Although this form of storing dates seems unintuitive, it makes sense because it’s easier for Excel to perform various calculations with dates when in integer form.

Since it’s difficult for us humans to understand this date format though, it becomes necessary to convert these serial numbers to a recognizable date format.

In this tutorial, we will see three ways to convert a serial number to date format in Excel.

Understanding the Concept of Serial Numbers

Excel stores date in the form of integers or serial numbers. The serial starts from January 1, 1900, and increases by 1 for each day since then. That means January 1, 1900, has the serial 1, the next day has the serial 2, and so on.

In this way, the serial for June 1, 2019, is 43617, because it is exactly 43,617 days after January 1, 1900.

Throughout this tutorial, we are going to use the following set of date serial numbers.

We will use the above three methods to convert these serial numbers to dates in different formats.

Method 1: Converting Serial Number to Date using the TEXT function

The TEXT function in Excel converts any numeric value (like date, time, and currency) into text with the given format. We can use this function to convert our serial number to any date format.

Here’s the syntax for the TEXT function:

= TEXT (serial_number, date_format_code)

In this function,

• serial_number is the numeric value or reference to the cell that you want to convert.
• date_format_code is the date format you want to convert the serial number to.

The TEXT function essentially applies the date_format_code that you specified on the provided serial_number and returns a text string with that format. For example, if you have the serial number “43141” in cell A2, then =TEXT(A2,”dd/mm/yy”) will return “10/02/18”

The format code will depend on the format that you want your converted date to appear. Here are some basic building blocks for the format codes that you can use:

Format Codes for Day of the Month:

You can use the following basic format codes to represent day values:

• d – one or two-digit representation of the day (eg: 3 or 30)
• dd – two-digit representation of the day (eg: 03 or 30)
• ddd – the day of the week in abbreviated form (eg: Sun, Mon)
• dddd – full name of the day of the week (eg: Sunday, Monday)

So,

• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “d”) to the sample dataset, it will return “10”.
•  if you apply =TEXT(A2, “dd”), then it will return “10”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “ddd”) to the sample dataset, it will return “Sat”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “dddd”), then it will return “Saturday”.

Format Codes for Year:

You can use the following basic format codes to represent year values:

• yy – two-digit representation of year (e.g. 20 or 12)
• yyyy – four-digit representation of year (e.g. 2020 or 2012)

So,

• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “yy”) to the sample dataset, it will return “18”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “yyyy”), then it will return “2018”.

Format Codes for Month of the Year:

You can use the following basic format codes to represent month values:

• m – one or two-digit representation of the month (eg; 8 or 12)
• mm – two-digit representation of the month (eg; 08 or 12)
• mmm – month abbreviated in three letters (eg: Aug or Dec)
• mmmm – month expressed with the full name (eg: August or December)

So,

• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “m”) to the sample dataset, it will return “2”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “mm”), then it will return “02”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “mmm”), then it will return “Feb”.
• if you apply =TEXT(A2, “mmmm”), then it will return “February”.

Let us see how we can apply the TEXT function to our sample dataset to convert all the serial numbers to different date formats.

We will first see how to convert the serial numbers in column A to the format shown in column B in the image below:

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Click on a blank cell where you want the converted date to be displayed (B2)
2. Type the formula:

   =TEXT(A2,”mm/dd/yy”).

3. Press the Return key.
4. This should display the serial number in our required date format. Copy this to the rest of the cells in the column by dragging down the fill handle or double-clicking on it.
5. Copy this column’s formula results by pressing CTRL+C or Cmd+C (if you’re on a Mac).
6. Right-click on the column and form the popup menu that appears, press Paste Values from the Paste Options.
7. This will store the formula results as permanent values in the same column. Now you can go ahead and remove column A if you want to.

The result you get in column B will differ according to the format code you used in step 2. Here are some format codes along with the type of result you will get when applied to cell A2:

Function	Result
=TEXT(A2, “dd/mm/yy”)	02/10/18
=TEXT(A2, “mm-dd-yy”)	02-10-18
TEXT(A2,”dddd, mmmm d, yyyy”)”)	Saturday, February 10, 2018

This means you can use the TEXT function to convert serial numbers to any date format of your choice. All you need to do is change the format_code according to your requirement.

Note: Using this formula, your converted date is in text format. If you want to convert it to date format, you need to use the Format Cells feature.

Also read: How To Combine Date and Time in Excel (3 Easy Ways)

Method 2: Converting Serial Number to Date using Format Cells

This method makes use of Excel’s FormatCells dialog box. The Format Cells dialog box is very versatile and lets you perform different kinds of formatting from one place.

You can use Format Cells to convert the serial numbers in our sample dataset into dates as follows:

1. Select all the cells containing the serial numbers that you want to convert (A2:A6).
2. Right-click on your selection and select Format Cells from the popup menu that appears. Alternatively, you can select the dialog box launcher in the Number group under the Home tab.
3. This will open the Format Cells dialog box. Click on the Number tab
4. Under Category on the left side of the box, select the Date option.
5. This will display a number of formatting options for the date on the right side.
6. Select the format that you want.
7. If you don’t find an option for the format you want to use, then you can use the Custom option from the Category list on the left. This lets you convert the cell to a custom date format.
8. Check if your required date format is available among the format codes under Type. If not, you can type in your format code in the input box just below Type.
9. Click OK to close the Format Cells dialog box.

All your selected cells should now be converted to date with your required format.

Note that these cells do not have the little green triangles at the top left corners. This is because these cells are of type date, and not text. So, you can perform any kind of date operations on them.

Also read: How to Add Minutes to Time in Excel?

Method 3: Converting Serial Number to date using VBA

If you’re comfortable with coding or using VBA, then you can use this method to quickly get all your serial numbers converted to date in one go.

Here’s the VBA code. You can copy and save this code somewhere for future use:

Sub convert_serial_num_to_date()
Dim rng As Range
Dim cell As Range
Set rng = Application.Selection
For Each cell In rng
cell.Offset(0, 1).Value = CDate(cell.Value)
Next cell
End Sub

Here are the steps you need to follow if you want to apply the above code to your dataset:

1. From the Developer Menu Ribbon, select Visual Basic.
2. Once your VBA window opens, Click Insert->Module. Now you can start coding. Type or copy-paste the above lines of code into the module window. Your code is now ready to run.
3. Go to your worksheet and select the range of cells containing the serial numbers you want to convert. Make sure the column next to it is blank because this is where the code will display the results.
4. Navigate to Developer->Macros-> convert_serial_num_to_date->Run.

You will now see the serial numbers converted to dates in the column next to your selection.

If you want to, you can now delete the original column containing the serial numbers.

In this tutorial, we saw three simple ways in which you can convert date serial numbers to actual dates in Excel. These included the use of the TEXT function, the Format Cells feature, and the VBA script.

Using the TEXT function usually results in cells that are of the text format so it requires subsequent conversion of these cells to the date format.

Using Format Cells, however, you can apply the operation directly on the original cells and the results you get are of the date type. So, you can directly start applying the cells to date-related operations. T

The VBA script that we provided in this tutorial used CDate() to quickly convert the serial number to its date equivalent. Moreover, the script results in cells that are of type date.

So again, it’s easier to use these results in subsequent date operations.

We hope you found the pointers we provided in this tutorial helpful and easy to apply.

Other Excel tutorials you may like:

• How to Convert Date to Month and Year in Excel
• How to Convert Decimal to Fraction in Excel
• How to Convert Radians to Degrees in Excel
• How to Add Days to a Date in Excel
• How to Sort by Date in Excel (Single Column & Multiple Columns)
• How to Convert Date to Day of Week in Excel
• How to Convert Month Number to Month Name in Excel
• Find Last Monday of the Month Date in Excel
• How to Change Date and Time to Date in Excel

Introduction

For a little project of mine, I needed to convert a serial date number to day/month/year (DMY) and vice versa. The serial number came from date field in a converted Paradox database and seemed to be exactly the same as the serial date in Microsoft Excel, hence the article name. After some Googling, I learned that the Excel serial date is related to Julian date, and found a speedy algorithm to convert these numbers to DMY and vice versa.

Excel Serial Date Number

Now what is an Excel serial date number? 37477 is a serial date number and is the number of days since 1-1-1900. 37477 actually translates to Aug 9, 2002, the date of writing this article.

The number of days since 1-1-1900 isn’t that hard to calculate of course, once you know the leap years. Microsoft Excel however contains a bug with its date calculation: it considers 29-02-1900 as a valid date, but 1900 isn’t a leap year! 29-02-1900 is not a valid date!

According to the stories, Microsoft decided to duplicate this date bug from Lotus 123, which was the dominating spreadsheet application at the time Excel was being written. This allowed Excel to open Lotus 123 spreadsheets without date problems.

(Note that a serial date number may also contain a fraction that denotes the time. It’s actually the percentage of 24 hours, but that’s not for this article.)

Mac Excel Serial Date number

Excel on the Apple Mac uses a slightly different Serial Date number base: the number of days since 1-1-1904. That’s why Excel also features a «1904 Date System» checkbox in its Options (Calculation tab). I won’t go into this further.

Translating Serial Date Number to DMY

First of all, credit where credit is due. I got the basic algorithm from here. It’s about converting a Julian date to DMY using integer calculations. I won’t bore you with the theory (following the above hyperlink), but the original Julian has a different base date.

With an addition of a certain number, the algorithm comes close to the Excel serial date. And when the 29-02-1900 issue is handled, we’ve got an Excel serial date to Day, Month, Year calculation!

void ExcelSerialDateToDMY(int nSerialDate, int &nDay, 
                          int &nMonth, int &nYear)
{
            if (nSerialDate == 60)
    {
        nDay    = 29;
        nMonth    = 2;
        nYear    = 1900;

        return;
    }
    else if (nSerialDate < 60)
    {
                        nSerialDate++;
    }

        int l = nSerialDate + 68569 + 2415019;
    int n = int(( 4 * l ) / 146097);
            l = l - int(( 146097 * n + 3 ) / 4);
    int i = int(( 4000 * ( l + 1 ) ) / 1461001);
        l = l - int(( 1461 * i ) / 4) + 31;
    int j = int(( 80 * l ) / 2447);
     nDay = l - int(( 2447 * j ) / 80);
        l = int(j / 11);
        nMonth = j + 2 - ( 12 * l );
    nYear = 100 * ( n - 49 ) + i + l;
}

Calculate an Excel serial date from Day, Month, Year. The function assumes that the day, month and year are valid date numbers.

int DMYToExcelSerialDate(int nDay, int nMonth, int nYear)
{
            if (nDay == 29 && nMonth == 02 && nYear==1900)
        return 60;

        long nSerialDate = 
            int(( 1461 * ( nYear + 4800 + int(( nMonth - 14 ) / 12) ) ) / 4) +
            int(( 367 * ( nMonth - 2 - 12 * ( ( nMonth - 14 ) / 12 ) ) ) / 12) -
            int(( 3 * ( int(( nYear + 4900 + int(( nMonth - 14 ) / 12) ) / 100) ) ) / 4) +
            nDay - 2415019 - 32075;

    if (nSerialDate < 60)
    {
                        nSerialDate--;
    }

    return (int)nSerialDate;
}

Return to Excel Formulas List

Download Example Workbook

Download the example workbook

This tutorial will demonstrate how to convert a date to a serial number corresponding to that date (or vis-a-versa) in Excel and Google Sheets

Date to Number

To convert a date to a serial number, all you need to do is change the formatting to General:

However, this won’t work if the date is stored as text.

Date Stored as Text to Number

If the date is stored as text, you can use DATEVALUE convert it to an Excel date:

=DATEVALUE(B3)

Then you can change the formatting to general to see the serial number.

Number to Date

To convert a serial number to a date, all you need to do is the change the formatting from General (or Number) to a date format (ex. Short Date):

Convert Date to Number in Google Sheets

All of the above examples work exactly the same in Google Sheets as in Excel.