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DATE / YEAR / MONTH / DAY

Dates

Build a real date from three numbers, or pull the year, month, or day back out.

Difficulty

Amateur
Excel file

1What is it?

DATE assembles a proper date from a year, a month, and a day — the reliable way to turn three separate numbers (or the pieces of a text date) into something Excel treats as a real date. YEAR, MONTH, and DAY do the reverse, extracting each part from a date. Together they let you rebuild dates safely (DATE handles month overflow, so DATE(2026, 13, 1) rolls to January 2027) and group or compare by any part — all invoices in one month, everyone with a Q1 renewal.

2What it looks like

DATE(year, month, day)
year
The four-digit year.
month
The month number, 1–12 (values outside roll over to the next/prior year).
day
The day number (overflow rolls into the next month).

3When you use it

  • Build a date from parts: =DATE(B2, C2, D2).
  • Group by month or year: =MONTH(A2) or =YEAR(A2) as a helper column.
  • First of a month: =DATE(YEAR(A2), MONTH(A2), 1).

4See it in action

Change the inputs — the formula and result update live. Prefer the real thing? Download the Excel file and open it in Excel.

Build a date from parts · 1 of 2

DATE assembles a real date from year, month, and day. Push the month past 12 and it rolls into the next year.

C2
fx
=DATE(B2, B3, B4)Mar 15, 2026
ABC
1PartValueResult
2YearMar 15, 2026
3Month
4Day

The lime cell holds the formula — click it (or any cell) to see its contents in the bar above, just like Excel. Edit the blue cells to watch it recompute.

5Common errors

Shows a numberThe result isn't formatted as a date.

Fix: Format the cell as Date — DATE returns a date serial.

Two-digit year surpriseYou passed 26 hoping for 2026.

Fix: Excel reads 0–1899 as an offset from 1900 — pass the full four-digit year.

#VALUE! from YEAR/MONTH/DAYThe input is text that looks like a date, not a real date.

Fix: Convert with DATEVALUE first, or fix the source so it's a genuine date.

6Better functions & alternatives

  • TODAY / NOW — The current date instead of a built one.
  • EOMONTH / EDATE — Shift a date by whole months without rebuilding it.
  • TEXT — Format a date as a label ("mmm yyyy") rather than take it apart.

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