Excel YEAR function

Summary

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.

Purpose

Get the year from a date

Return value

Year as 4-digit number

Arguments

date - A valid Excel date.

Syntax

=YEAR(date)

Usage notes

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.

Author

Dave Bruns

Hi - I'm Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.