Description
Used to return the number of the period (days, months, and years) between two dates. Like NETWORKDAYS function, it also provides dates between two dates, however, the results of dated if are more generic as compared in the following ways:
It returns all days between two dates and not only working days.
The results of this function can also be returned in years and months, as numbers.
This function has some other functionalities as well:
You can calculate days between two dates, ignoring their year. For example, there are 123 days between 15th May and 15 September of the same year. “yd” argument returns the number of days between two dates irrespective of the years of these dates.
NOTE: The Datedif function is a legacy from the Lotus system and Excel has kept it to maintain compatibility with old versions. However, Excel does not show suggestions for this function and you have to memorize its arguments.
=DATEDIF(start_date,end_date,unit)
The DATEDIF function syntax has the following arguments:
- Start_date Required.
A date that represents the start date.
-
End_date Required.
A date that represents the end/ last date.
- Unit Required.
The unit represents the period you want excel to return. Following units can be entered in the DATEDIF function.
“y” The number of complete years in the period.
“m” The number of complete months in the period.
“d” The number of days in the period.
“md” The difference in days between the start_date and end_date. the months and years are ignored.
“ym” The difference in months between the start_date and end_date. the days and years are ignored.
“yd” The difference in days between the start_date and end_date. The years of the date are ignored.
NOTE: Unit is always entered in between inverted commas (e.g. “y”), otherwise excel will return #NAME error.
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