Why does excel calculate difference in days from February - March

[Guest]

Trying to set an automatic calculation of the difference in days between
dates. Using the "days360" works fine, except when dealing with the month of
February. If the two dates go from February to a date, in say March, it adds
two days to the calculation.

I've found that other date calculations I've done have been affected by this
glitch. I'm using Excel 2002 on a WinXP Pro system.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

It's not a glitch. Days360 uses a convention of 12 months, each with 30
days. So, February is adjusted to a 30 day month. If you use it to check
the day count between say May 28 and June 3 you'll see one day fewer than
actual calendar days.

For an accurate day count, just subtract one day from the other, formatting
the results as General or Comma

 

[Bernard Liengme]

DAYS360 is for the parallel universe where there are 12 moths each with 30
days.
So one is lost in Jan and 2 added in Feb.
best wishes

 

[Guest]

Well that explains a lot! Is there another function that uses the actual
calendar, instead of Microsoft's weird alternate universe?

I'd think that they would have something that would use the actual calendar,
like it does in MS Project. Works beautifully with my Gandt charts.

I guess I'm not familiar with using the option of formatting the results as
general or comma, so if you happen to have a link to an instructional, I'd
greatly appreciate it!

Also, thanks to the both of you for responding so quickly to a
Novice/Intermediate user like myself! I've used many basic functions of
excel for years, but didn't start using it for date calculations until this
project that I'm on.