EDATE will return a serial number corresponding to a date. To display the result as a date, apply a number format of your choice. Note: The EDATE function returns the same day of the month n months in the past or future. Use the EOMONTH function to return the last day of the month n months in the past or future.
Example #1 - Basic usage
If A1 contains the date February 1, 2018, you can use EDATE like this:
Example #2 - 6 months from today
To use EDATE with today’s date, you can combine it with the TODAY function. For example, to create a date exactly 6 months from today, you can use:
Example #3 - Move by years
To use the EDATE function to move by years, multiply by 12. For example, to move a date forward 2 years, you can use either of these formulas: The second form is handy when you already have a value for years in another cell and want to convert to months inside EDATE.
Example #4 - End of month
EDATE is clever about rolling “end of month” dates forwards or backwards, and will adjust year, month, and day values as necessary. For example EDATE will maintain the last day of month when a day is 31: EDATE will also respect leap years: However, EDATE will not maintain an end of month when the day value is less than 31. For example: If an end-of-month date is a requirement, the EOMONTH function is a better option.
Example #5 - EDATE with time
The EDATE function will strip times from dates that include time (sometimes called a “datetime”). To preserve the time in a date, you can use a formula like this: Here, the MOD function is used to extract the time from the date in A1 and add it back to the result from EDATE. See below for more examples of formulas that use the EDATE function.
Notes
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
