Copy and paste the formula down the column, or quickly autofill using one of the autofill methods of Excel.Įxpert Tip: Before you begin, pre-format the cell that will hold your first formula in a number format. If so, open the Format Cells dialog box and change the date format to a number format. When you enter this formula, Excel may display an odd-looking date instead of the number of days as expected. This formula tells Excel to subtract the date in cell B4 from today's date, which is Apin our example. Substitute the cell reference of your top-most date cell for cell B4. In cell C4, we entered the formula =TODAY()-B4. The open dates are all in the past, so we can use a simple subtraction using the TODAY function of Excel.
In the example below, our help desk calculates how many days trouble incidents have been open. How many days has an invoice been open? There are many examples of wanting to know the number of days between today's date and a date in the past. Formula When Worksheet Dates Are in the Past If you need to perform these calculations in your sheet and you know some of the worksheet dates might be missing, we recommend reading How to Subtract Dates From Today's Date When Some Dates are Blank instead.
