Purpose
Get the year from a date
Return value
Year as 4-digit number
Syntax
=YEAR(date)- date - A valid Excel date.
Using the YEAR function
The YEAR function extracts the year from a given date as a 4-digit number. For example:
=YEAR("23-Aug-2012") // returns 2012
=YEAR("11-May-2019") // returns 2019
You can use the YEAR function to extract a month number from a date into a cell, or to feed a month number into another function like the DATE function:
=DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1) // first of same year
See below for more examples of formulas that use the DATE function.
Note: dates are serial numbers in Excel, and begin on January 1, 1900. Dates before 1900 are not supported. To display date values in a human-readable date format, apply the number format of your choice.
Notes
- Date must be a valid Excel date.
- YEAR will return a #VALUE error on text values.
YEAR function examples
Year is a leap year
In this example, the goal is to write a formula that will return TRUE if a year is a leap year and FALSE if not. This is a surprisingly challenging problem in Excel for two reasons: (1) Excel thinks 1900 is a leap year due to a long-standing bug inherited from Lotus 1-2-3 and (2) The logic for...
Add years to date
Ever needed to calculate someone's retirement date? Or figure out when a 30-year mortgage will end? Or maybe you're setting a contract expiration date? In each case, you need a way to add years to a date. Here's something that might surprise you: most Excel users tackle this problem with a formula...
Get percent of year complete
The goal in this example is to return the amount of time completed in a year as a percentage value, based on any given date. In other words, when given the date July 1, 2021, the formula should return 50% since we are halfway* through the year. *By default, the YEARFRAC function uses a 30/360-day...
Get year from date
The YEAR function takes just one argument, the date from which you want to extract the year. In the example, the formula is: =YEAR(B4) B4 contains a date value for January 5, 2016. The YEAR function returns the number 2016 representing the year of the date. Note that you can use YEAR to extract the...
Get nth day of year
This formula takes advantage of the fact that dates are just sequential numbers in Excel. It determines the last day of the previous year and subtracts that value from the original date with this formula: =B5-DATE(YEAR(B5),1,0) The result is nth day of the year, based on the date in cell B5. Notice...
Get fiscal year from date
In this example, the goal is to return the fiscal year for any given date, where a fiscal year starts in July as seen in the worksheet. By convention a fiscal year is denoted by the year in which it ends. So, if a fiscal year begins in July, then the date August 1, 2018 is in fiscal year 2019. The...
Sequence of years
The goal is to generate a series of dates one year apart. In the current version of Excel, the easiest way to do this is with the SEQUENCE function together with the DATE, YEAR, MONTH, and DAY functions. In older versions of Excel, you can use the same date functions and a more manual approach...
Count birthdays by year
In this example, the goal is to count birthdays by year. The source data is an Excel Table named data in the range C5:C16. The birthdays we want to count are in the Birthday column. In column E, the years of interest have been previously entered. The easiest way to solve this problem is with the...
Count dates in given year
The YEAR function extracts the year from a valid Excel date . For example: =YEAR("15-Jun-2021") // returns 2021 In this case, we are giving YEAR and array of dates in the named range dates : YEAR(dates) Because dates contains 11 cells, we get back 11 results in an array like this: {2018;2017;2019;...
Sum by fiscal year
The goal of this example is to sum amounts by fiscal year, when the fiscal year begins in July. The first approach is a self-contained formula based on the SUMPRODUCT function. The second method uses SUMIF with column D as a helper column. Either approach will work correctly, and the best option...
Get months between dates
In this example, the goal is to calculate the number of months between two valid Excel dates . This is a curiously tricky problem in Excel because the number of days in a month varies, and the rules about how a whole month might be calculated are not obvious. In addition, there is not a modern...
Date is same month and year
In this example, the goal is to mark dates in column D with an "x" when they have the same year and month as the date in cell B5. We don't care at all about the day. At a high level, we can easily use the IF function to return "x" for qualifying dates, so the challenge is in creating a logical test...
Data validation date in specific year
Data validation rules are triggered when a user adds or changes a cell value. This custom validation formula simply checks the year of any date against a hard-coded year value using the YEAR function. When a user enters a value, the YEAR function extracts and compares the year to 2016: =YEAR(C5)=...
Zodiac sign lookup
The goal of this example is to look up the correct astrological or zodiac sign for a given birthdate, using the table shown in B5:F15. These are based on the Western zodiac signs described here . Zodiac signs are used in horoscopes, which are a kind of forecast of a person's future, based on the...
Get last day of month
In this example, the goal is to get the last day of the month based on any valid date. This problem can be solved most easily with the EOMONTH function. However, it can also be solved with the DATE function as explained below. The EOMONTH function The EOMONTH function returns the last day of the...
YEAR function videos
How to calculate years and months between dates
In this video we'll look at how to calculate the number of years or months between dates using a function called DATEDIF and a function called YEARFRAC . The DATEDIF function is a "compatibility" function that comes from Lotus 1-2-3. For reasons that are unknown, it's only documented in Excel 2000...
How to work with dates
Excel contains special functions that will let you extract the day, month, and year from a valid date. Let's take a look. Here we have a set of random dates in column B. First, I'll add a formula to column C to pick up the date values in B and format them with the General format, so we can see the...
How to create date and time series with formulas
Although you can use Excel's AutoFill feature to fill in a series of dates and times, you can also do the same thing with formulas. The advantage of using a formula is that you can easily change the starting value and generate a new series. Let's take a look. Often you'll need to generate a series...
Related functions
YEAR Function
The Excel YEAR function returns the year component of a date as a 4-digit number. You can use the YEAR function to extract a year number from a date into a cell or to extract and feed a year value into another formula, like the DATE function.
MONTH Function
The Excel MONTH function extracts the month from a given date as a number between 1 and 12. You can use the MONTH function to extract a month number from a date into a cell or to feed a month number into another function like the DATE function....
DAY Function
The Excel DAY function returns the day of the month as a number between 1 and 31 based on a given date. You can use the DAY function to extract a day number from a date into a cell. You can also use the DAY function to extract and feed a day value into another function, like the...
DATE Function
The Excel DATE function creates a valid date from individual year, month, and day components. The DATE function is useful for assembling dates that need to change dynamically based on other values in a worksheet.
