Table of Contents
Summary
The Excel DATE function returns the number that represents a date in Excel. If the cell number format is set to a date type then the number will be shown as a date. The DATE function is an Excel date and time function.
Function
=DATE(year, month, day)
Arguments (inputs)
year = a number from 1900 to 9999
month = a number from 1 to 12 representing the month of the year
day = a number from 1 to 31 representing the day of the month
Return value
The DATE function returns a number representing a date in Excel. If the cell number format is set to a date type then the number will be shown as a readable date. If the cell number format is not set to date, then the number returned will not be a recognizable date.
Example
In the example above the DATE function returns the number that represents the date based on the inputs for year, month, and day in cells C5, C7, and C9 respectively.
=DATE(C5, C7, C9)
The result returned is 6/20/2018.
Note, if cell F5 is set to number type, the result returned is 43271, which is the number that represents the date 6/20/2018 in Excel. Cell F5 number format must be set to date to return the date in the format 6/20/2018.
