Differences between Dates

[Jack]

Hello,

Please write a formula for me that will give m,e the difference between two
dates.
My fields are like this.
Start Date End Date Total Days

7/10/08 7/15/08 5

What the total day box need to be in days not dates.

Thanks

 

[JBoyer]

Format your start date and end date cells to a date format, then use
=DAYS360(A1,B1); A1 being your start date, and b1 being your end date. Note
that this formula bases a year on 360 days (12 months with 30 days).

 

[John C]

Set up your calculation =ENDDATE-STARTDATE, which will automatically format
it as a date since it is referring to dates. Then go to Format--> Cells, and
choose to format it as General (or number).

 

[Reitanos]

It sounds like you might have been confused by Excel's attempt to
maintain consistent formatting.

The formula is nothing more than =C2-B2, but because these are dates,
Excel guesses that the result is also a date. All you need to do is go
to Format/Cells... and select the appropriate format for the number.
You can abbreviate the process by clicking the Comma Style button
(looks like a comma) to apply your formatting but it will give you 2
decimal places by default.

 

[David Biddulph]

Why use DAYS360, when B1-A1 would do the trick directly (and doesn't have
the 30 day approximation)?

 

[JBoyer]

I realize that B1-A1 does the trick directly. I thought it was obvious, so i
thought he was looking for a different function. Hence, why i gave him the
DAYS360 function and noted the 30 day approximation that the function uses.