Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. 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.
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, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Calculating Fractions of Years.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!
Simple math will tell you what the previous day is (just subtract 1 from today's date). What if you want to know the date of ...
Discover MoreIf your company closes out its accounting months at the end of each calendar quarter, figuring out the proper closing dates ...
Discover MoreWhen entering times in a worksheet, you may have a need to round whatever you enter to the nearest 15-minute increment. There ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2014-08-04 08:02:47
Bryan
If you are going to use the results of the calculation in another formula it would be better to use cell formatting to change the number of decimal places instead of using a formula. This way you are using full precision and you won't get rounding errors down the road.
2014-08-03 08:26:37
Bob Beechey
Ray's suggestion could be simplified with:
=ROUND(YEARFRAC(Date1, Date2, Basis),2)
The most accurate basis for most applications is 1 where the actual dates for each relevant month is divided by the actual number of days for the years concerned.
2014-08-02 09:58:06
Ray
To display 2dp: Format the cell to 2 decimal places.
If you want to round the result to 2dp use =(INT(C3*100+0.5))/100 where the number to be rounded is in C3.
Or you can combine as
=(INT((YEARFRAC(DateOne, DateTwo, Basis)*100+0.5))/100
2014-08-02 08:10:11
Pete
How can I adapt this formula so that the result is to just two decimal places?
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 © 2017 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. 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