Excel 2016 Formulas

Chapter 6 Working with Dates and Times

In This Chapter

• An overview of using dates and times in Excel
• Excel’s date-related functions
• Excel’s time-related functions

Beginners often find working with dates and times in Excel to be frustrating. To help avoid this frustration, you’ll need a good understanding of how Excel handles time-based information. This chapter provides the information you need to create powerful formulas that manipulate dates and times.

Note

The dates in this chapter correspond to the U.S. English date format: month/day/year. For example, 3/1/1952 refers to March 1, 1952—not January 3, 1952. We know this may seem illogical to those of you who are accustomed to seeing dates in the day/month/year format, but that’s how we Americans have been trained. We trust you can make the adjustment while reading this chapter.

How Excel Handles Dates and Times

This section presents a quick overview of how Excel deals with dates and times. It includes coverage of Excel’s date and time serial number system and offers tips for entering and formatting dates and times.

Cross-Ref

Other chapters in this book contain additional date-related information. For example, see Chapter 7, “Counting and Summing Techniques,” for counting examples that use dates. Also, Chapter 26, ...