Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 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: Using Early Dates.

Using Early Dates

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 26, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365


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There are three basic types of information that can be stored in a cell: numeric values, strings (text), and dates. In reality, dates are nothing more than numeric values, with the number being stored representing the number of days (and partial days for the time portion of a date) since January 1, 1900. This is a quick, handy way for Excel to store dates.

What happens, however, if you are doing genealogical or historical work and you need to keep track of dates that are earlier than 1/1/1900? There are essentially three ways you can approach this problem.

First, you can split up your dates. You could, for instance, include three columns for each date: one for day, one for month, and one for year. This, of course, will not allow you to change display formats for different date notations, but it will allow you to sort (using the column contents) as you desire, and to do rudimentary math on the dates. This approach to early dates can be the easiest to implement.

Another option is to use your own date notation for entering dates. For instance, if you wanted to enter the date for April 25, 1885, you could enter it as 18850425. This would be treated as a numeric value by Excel, which means you could do math based on the numbers. Because the notation has the year first, you could easily sort dates according to need. The only drawback to this method is that you cannot use Excel's date formatting, and you must get used to the notational syntax.

Finally, you can either create your own macros to work with out-of-range dates, or you can use a third-party solution. One such solution is found at Charley Kyd's site:

http://www.exceluser.com/formulas/earlydates.htm

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11082) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Using Early Dates.

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. ...

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What is 4 + 0?

2021-09-12 12:57:48

Tomek

I meant dates after Jan. 1 and before Mar. 1, 1900.


2021-09-12 12:54:57

Tomek

There is a bug in the way Excel handles dates before March 1, 1900. The bug stems from the fact that year 1900 was NOT a LEAP year, but Excel accepts Feb. 29 of that year as a valid date!. It assigns serial number 60 to this date. Hence any arithmetic calculations that crosses that date is off by one day.

Also, Excel accepts 0 as the date serial number - and converts it to 1900-01-00. However it will not accept entry of such a date as valid and will treat it as text.

In general, the dates are handled OK if they are between March 1, 1900 and December 31, 9999


2021-06-27 10:25:51

J. Woolley

For extended date functions (years 0100 to 9999), see Chapter 8 of J. Walkenbach, "Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA Examples." You can Download from https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Excel+2013+Power+Programming+with+VBA-p-9781118490402


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