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EDATE

Dates

The same day, N months out — clean anniversary, renewal, and due dates.

Difficulty

Amateur
Excel file

1What is it?

EDATE returns the date that is a given number of months before or after a start date, keeping the same day of the month. It's how you roll a date forward by whole months — a 12-month renewal, a 3-month trial end, a net-60 term — and it handles month lengths sensibly (one month after Jan 31 lands on the last day of February).

2What it looks like

EDATE(start_date, months)
start_date
The date to start from.
months
How many months forward (+) or back (−). 0 = the same date.

3When you use it

  • Contract or subscription renewal date one year out: EDATE(start, 12).
  • A net-60 due date: EDATE(invoice, 2).
  • Build a column of evenly spaced monthly dates for a schedule.

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.

Start simple · 1 of 2

The same day, N months out from the date in B2.

C2
fx
=EDATE(B2, 12)Jan 15, 2027
ABC
1FieldValueResult
2Start date1/15/2026Jan 15, 2027

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 cell isn't formatted as a date.

Fix: Format the cell as Date — the underlying value is a date serial number.

#VALUE!start_date is text, not a real date.

Fix: Make the input a genuine date (DATEVALUE, or fix the source).

#NUM!The result falls outside Excel's date range.

Fix: Check the months argument isn't wildly large or negative.

6Better functions & alternatives

  • EOMONTH — The month-END N months out, rather than the same day.
  • DATE — Build a date from year, month, day when you need full control.

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