DATE function

Function Type:

Date and Time

Description:

The DATE function in Excel allows you to build a date from individual year, month, and day values.
It would Return the value or serial number of a particular date.

To make Date and Time functions easier to understand, we have to keep in mind that dates in Excel and Google Sheets are stored as serial numbers, with each date representing the number of days since January 0, 1900.

For example, the serial number 1 represents January 1, 1900, the serial number 2 represents January 2, 1900, and so on. The serial number 1.5 represents January 1, 1900 at noon, and the serial number 2.25 represents January 2, 1900 at 6:00 AM.
Date is an integer (whole number) while time is a fraction / decimal serial numbers.

January 0, 1900 wouldn't qualify as a date since there is no serial number 0 and it doesn't exist in our calendars ;)

Pro Tip:
Keyboard shortcut to enter the date today is ctrl ;

Function Structure:

=DATE(year, month, day).

Argument Breakdown:

year - Specify the number of the year. It only accepts number, cell reference or a function that results in a number. If you want to use the year of the certain date, you can use the YEAR function.

month - Specify the month number. It only accepts number, cell reference or a function that results in a number. If you want to use the year of the certain date, you can use the MONTH function.

day - Specify the day number. It only accepts number, cell reference or a function that results in a number. If you want to use the year of the certain date, you can use the DAY function.

Example:

Return the date today using hard-code values/number

January 9, 2023

Return the date from a list of Year, Month and Date.

DATE function is best used with other Date and Time functions to make it more dynamic. Meaning we can use another function to specify the year, month, or day that you can use for your DATE function.
Most commonly used function together with DATE function is the TODAY.

Return the first day of this month and year using TODAY, YEAR and MONTH functions.

January 1, 2023

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