Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Days Left in the Year.

Days Left in the Year

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 7, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365


Do you ever need to figure out how many days are left in the current year? Since Excel stores dates as serial numbers—making them easy to subtract—it is easy to put together a formula that will return the number of days left in the year:

=DATE(YEAR(C12),12,31)-C12

This formula assumes that the date you want to analyze is in cell C12. It uses the DATE function to calculate the serial number for the last day of the year (December 31), and then subtracts the serial number for the actual date. The result is the difference—the number of days—between the two dates.

If you want to find the days left in the year from today, you don't need to put a date into a cell. You could use this formula:

=TEXT(DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),12,31)-TODAY(),0)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6147) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Days Left in the Year.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Editing a Hyperlink

Word allows you to embed active hyperlinks in your documents. If you later want to change or edit that hyperlink, you can ...

Discover More

Sorting Letters and Numbers

Sorting information in a worksheet can be confusing when Excel applies sorting rules of which you are unaware. This is ...

Discover More

Replacing Tildes at the Beginning of a Cell

Replacing a specific character (such as a tilde) seems a simple task, until you need to replace it only in a certain ...

Discover More

Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 365 applications with VBA programming. Written in clear terms and understandable language, the book includes systematic tutorials and contains both intermediate and advanced content for experienced VB developers. Designed to be comprehensive, the book addresses not just one Office application, but the entire Office suite. Check out Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Incrementing Months in Dates

Excel can easily store dates. If you want to increment a date by one month, there are a number of ways you can accomplish ...

Discover More

Ages in Years and Months

Calculating an age is a common task when working with dates. If you want to figure out the number of years and months ...

Discover More

Finding the Dates for Minimums and Maximums

If you use Excel to maintain a collection of data, you may need to find information in one column based on information in ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 6 - 1?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.