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

Understanding the Control Panel

The Control Panel is the heart of Windows. It allows you to change how Windows operates and how it communicates with the ...

Discover More

Figuring Out the Low-Score Winner

Need to figure out the lowest score in a range of scores? Here's the formulas to get the information you need.

Discover More

Printing a Portion of a Worksheet

Need to print a portion of a worksheet, but don't want to waste paper by printing the whole thing? It's easy to print ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Converting Mainframe Date Formats

Different industries and different computer systems specify dates in all sorts of strange ways. If you need to convert a ...

Discover More

Calculating Differences in Months using Non-Standard Date Values

Dates can be entered into a worksheet in any number of unique or novel ways. Working with those dates can be a challenge, ...

Discover More

Parsing Non-Standard Date Formats

When you load data into Excel that was created in other programs, the formatting used for some types of data (such as ...

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 four more than 2?

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.