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.
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.
Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!
Enter information into a worksheet, and you come to anticipate (and count on) how Excel will interpret that information ...
Discover MoreEver wonder how to calculate the date for Thanksgiving in the United States? In this tip you discover not only that, but ...
Discover MoreDoing math with dates is quite easy in Excel. As this tip illustrates, this fact makes it easy to figure out the Nth ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
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.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2026 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
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:
Comments