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Conditional formatting in Excel is a useful tool for highlighting data that meets specific criteria. In order to highlight dates that are older than 1 year, the user can follow a simple process. First, select the cells or column that contains the dates. Then, go to the “Home” tab and click on the “Conditional Formatting” option. From the drop-down menu, select “Highlight Cells Rules” and then “Less Than”. In the dialogue box, enter the formula “=TODAY()-365” and choose a formatting style to highlight the dates that are older than 1 year. This will make it easier to identify and analyze data that is more than a year old, helping in decision making and data management.
Excel: Apply Conditional Formatting to Dates Older Than 1 Year
To apply conditional formatting to cells that have a date older than one year from the current date in Excel, you can use the New Rule option under the Conditional Formatting dropdown menu within the Home tab.
The following example shows how to use this option in practice.
Example: Apply Conditional Formatting to Dates Older Than 1 Year
Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the date that various people most recently visited a gym:
This article is being written on 8/18/2023.
Suppose we would like to apply conditional formatting to any date that is over a year old.
To do so, we can highlight the cells in the range B2:B13, then click the Conditional Formatting dropdown menu on the Home tab and then click New Rule:
In the new window that appears, click Use a formula to determine which cells to format, then type =B2<TODAY()-365 in the box, then click the Format button and choose a fill color to use.
Once we press OK, all of the cells in the range B2:B13 that have a date over a year old from today (8/18/2023) will be highlighted:
If you would like to apply conditional formatting to dates that are a different number of years older than today, simply multiply the last value in the formula by that number.
For example, you could type =B2<TODAY()-365*2 in the conditional formatting rule box to instead highlight cells that have a date older than 2 years from today.
Note: We chose to use a light green fill for the conditional formatting in this example, but you can choose any color and style you’d like for the conditional formatting.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel: