count number of month function not working

[Bosco Tsang]

I am trying to set a formula to calculate the months backward from
todays, and the following function seems not working ...it will return
xx/xx/1900 00:00 as output,

=datedif(c6,today(),"m")

and I've also tested the following, none return normal,

=year(today()) returns xx/xx/1900 00:00
=year(c6) returns yy/yy/1904 00:00
(not the same date as in c6)

Is there something wrong with my version of Excel? I am using MS
Office 2000.

How can I set up the formula to count the number of months from a
starting date (in c6) to today?

Thanks,
Bosco.

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

There's nothing wrong with your version. You just need to change to
format of the cell from Date to General or another Number format.

XL stores dates as offsets from a base date (31 December 1899), so
if the DateDif returns, say 30, then a date-formatted cell will
display 30 January 1900 if you're using the 1900 date system.

 

[John Tjia]

I know DATEDIF is a popular function in this group, but for what you
want, you may want to try DAYS360(startdate,enddate)/30. DAYS360
gives you the number of days between those two dates by assuming a
360-day year of 12 30-day months. Dividing it by 30 then gives you
the number of months.