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 Months of Tenure.

Calculating Months of Tenure

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 28, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


If you are in charge of tracking employees in your department or company, you might want to know if you can use Excel to calculate the months of tenure for those employees, given the date at which the employee started. This can be done very easily.

For the sake of this example, let's assume that column C contains the starting date for a list of employees. You could use the following formula in column D to determine each employee's tenure:

=DATEDIF(C3,NOW(),"M")

The DATEDIF function calculates the difference between a starting date and an ending date. The "M" used in the formula indicates that you want the result in completed months.

To calculate the average tenure for your series of employees, simply include the following formula at the bottom of column C:

=AVERAGE(C3:C174)

Of course, you should replace the range in the function (C3:C174) with the actual range of employee tenures as determined by the DATEDIF formula.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (9605) 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 Months of Tenure.

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

Limiting Input to Two Decimal Places

When entering data in a worksheet, you may want to exercise some degree of control on the values that can be entered. ...

Discover More

MS-DOS with Line Breaks Format in Word 2002 and Word 2003

Finding the built in functionality in Word 2002 & 2003 for saving your document as a MS-DOS format.

Discover More

Understanding Master and Subdocuments

Most people use Word to create regular documents that you edit, view, and print. The program also allows you to create a ...

Discover More

Dive Deep into Macros! Make Excel do things you thought were impossible, discover techniques you won't find anywhere else, and create powerful automated reports. Bill Jelen and Tracy Syrstad help you instantly visualize information to make it actionable. You’ll find step-by-step instructions, real-world case studies, and 50 workbooks packed with examples and solutions. Check out Microsoft Excel 2019 VBA and Macros today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Calculating a Group Retirement Date

Calculating a retirement date can be as simple as doing some date math to see when a person reaches a certain age. ...

Discover More

Converting an Unsupported Date Format

Excel makes it easy to import information created in other programs. Converting the imported data into something you can ...

Discover More

End-of-Month Calculations

Don't want to use the EOMONTH function to figure out the end of a given month? Here are some other ideas for discovering ...

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 8 - 0?

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.