Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 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: Calculating Fractions of Years.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 12, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365
One of the types of data that Excel allows you to store is, of course, dates. At some point you may wish to perform some calculations with the dates in your worksheet. It is not uncommon to need to figure out the percentage of a year represented by the difference between two dates. Excel allows you to calculate this easily using the YEARFRAC worksheet function.
To use the function, all you need to do is provide two dates and a value that specifies how Excel should calculate the fractional year:
=YEARFRAC(DateOne, DateTwo, Basis)
The dates used by YEARFRAC can be either static dates, or they can be references to cells that contain dates. The Basis value ranges between 0 and 4, with 0 being the default. The following are the different meanings for the Basis:
| Basis | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | US 30/360 | |
| 1 | Actual/actual | |
| 2 | Actual/360 | |
| 3 | Actual/365 | |
| 4 | European 30/360 |
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9366) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Calculating Fractions of Years.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 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:
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