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: Forcing Dates Forward.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 16, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365
Roger is keeping track of invoices in an Excel worksheet. All of the invoices need to be submitted with a due date for the 28th of the month, and Roger wondered if there was a way to force a date to always "jump forward" to the next instance of the 28th.
The cleanest way to force dates forward is to create a formula that will examine a date in a cell and then force that date to the next desired date, such as the 28th. The following formula is a good one to start with:
=IF(DAY(A1)>28,DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+1,28), DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1),28))
Remember that this is a single formula; it is entered into a single cell. This formula examines the date in cell A1. If the DAY value of the date is greater than 28, then the formula constructs and returns a date that is equal to the 28th of the next following. If it is less than or equal to 28, then the 28th of the current month is returned.
There is an even shorter way to render an acceptable formula, however—one that entirely gets rid of the IF function:
=DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+(DAY(A1)>28),28)
This uses the current year as the year, and the day is always 28. The month uses a Boolean calculation. If the day is greater than 28, then (Day(A1)>28) will be TRUE and will calculate as a 1, thereby adding 1 to the current month. If it is less than or equal to 28 it will be FALSE and calculate as a 0, just calculating the current month.
If you don't want to be "strict" giving some people only a day (4/27/2012 will give a due date of 4/28/2012), you could plan on giving them at least a week with the formula:
=DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+(DAY(A1)>21),28)
This would give the 28th of the current month for the 1st thru 21st, but for later dates it will jump to the 28th of the following month.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11603) 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: Forcing Dates Forward.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 365 applications with VBA programming. Written in clear terms and understandable language, the book includes systematic tutorials and contains both intermediate and advanced content for experienced VB developers. Designed to be comprehensive, the book addresses not just one Office application, but the entire Office suite. Check out Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 today!
Calculating an age is a common task when working with dates. If you want to figure out the number of years and months ...
Discover MoreExcel is brilliant at handling dates--as long as they aren't dates earlier than the base date used by the program. If you ...
Discover MoreIt is no secret that Excel allows you to work with dates in your worksheets. Getting your information into a format that ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2022-04-17 08:52:03
Beepee
Hi. That is a super snippet. Written just for me? :) Thank you.
I am a beginner at VBA, learnt my original 'programming' skills with ZX Spectum BASIC and have not done much since, until I retired. Used spreadsheets a lot but very little experience of macros.
Anyway, I started with VBA a few months ago and tried to use similar techniques - not always very successful. However, I needed a date calculation for my Gardening Calendar year which goes 1 Oct 2017 to 30 Sep. 2018 (cos that is when I created the sowing/planting/harvesting calendar).
To create a list of jobs that need doing in the next 7-8 days I actually created a procedure that broke down 'todays' date into year/month/day; used DateAdd() to add eight days; used an IF...Then -- to add 1 to the year if the month was 1 - 9 and then reconstructed the date. It worked!!!!! Only 20+ lines of code (including declarations!!) :)
But from your line of code I tweaked it to this: =DATE(YEAR(C2) +(MONTH(I4)<10),MONTH(I4),(DAY(I4)+8)) ...
and that does exactly the same job.
Brilliant -- thanks again and please; keep them coming
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 © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
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:
Comments