How can I apply conditional formatting to dates within 6 months in Excel?

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Conditional formatting in Excel allows users to highlight certain cells or data based on specific conditions. In this case, the condition is the time frame of 6 months. By applying conditional formatting to dates within 6 months, users can easily identify and highlight dates that fall within the given time frame. This can be helpful in various situations, such as tracking project deadlines, monitoring employee performance, or identifying upcoming events. By using the appropriate formula, users can effectively apply conditional formatting to dates within 6 months in Excel, making it a useful tool for data analysis and organization.

Excel: Apply Conditional Formatting to Dates within 6 Months

To apply conditional formatting to cells that have a date within 6 months of 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 within 6 Months

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the date that various people will retire from working:

This article is being written on 7/28/2023.

Suppose we would like to apply conditional formatting to any date that is within 90 days of today.

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 =DATEDIF(TODAY(),B2,”m”)<=6 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 within 6 months of 7/28/2023 will be highlighted:

If you would like to change the formula to highlight cells within a different number of months of the current, simply change the last number in the formulain the formatting rule box.

For example, you could type =DATEDIF(TODAY(),B2,”m”)<=3 in the conditional formatting rule box to instead highlight cells that have a date within 3 months of the current date.

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 operations in Excel:

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