"DAYS 360" and the date Feb 28th as start and end

  • Thread starter Thread starter Petteri Tuominen
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Petteri Tuominen

Hi,

I'm puzzled why Excel 2003 gives a difference in days as "-2" when using Feb
28th as the start and end date.

I have the following dates in two columns ("H" and "I") like this:
| 28.02.2006 | 28.02.2006 |

and then a third column on the same line, line 1, which has the formula:
=DAYS360(H1,I1)

And this gives me the result "-2"... If I just change the date to 28.03.2006
for both, it works ok, resulting in "0". The formula is working on this
sheet on every other occasion except on these "double-28.02.2006" dates.. I
even tried adding the "true" or "false" methods after the formula, but no
help.

Can anyone help and/or clarify why this is so?

thanks in advance,
-pjt
 
You are using this function in a way that it was not designed to b
used.

Days360(StartDate, EndDate) returns the number of days betwee
StartDate and EndDate based on a 360-day year (i.e., all months contai
30 days). If EndDate is earlier than StartDate, NumDays is negative
 
Also if the month in question is over 30 or under 30 excel treats it a
30 so that is why you are getting the -2
 
=A1-B1 returns the difference in days. Just Format as General or Number;
Excel will automatically format as date, which is pretty stupid in this
case!

360 days years are often used in financial calculations; they assume a year
of 12 months of 30 days. This avoids many difficult definition issues for
months.
 
Hi,
thanks for the explanation, although I can't understand the benefits of
using "artificial" months (i.e. all with 30 days)... Or is the 365-way
impossible to code in the sw?

Is there a way to calculate the days as they appear in the real world?

No "Days 365" -function exists.. ;-)

-pjt
 
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