How do I format a date in Google Sheets?

Converts a year, month, and day into a date.

Sample Usage

DATE(1969,7,20)

DATE(A2,B2,C2)

Syntax

DATE(year, month, day)

• year – The year component of the date.

• month – The month component of the date.

• day – The day component of the date.

Notes

• Inputs to DATE must be numbers – if a string or a reference to a cell containing a string is provided, the #VALUE! error will be returned.

• DATE will silently recalculate numeric dates which fall outside of valid month or day ranges. For example, DATE(1969,13,1), which specifies the illegal month 13, will create a date of 1/1/1970. Similarly, DATE(1969,1,32), which specifies the non-existent 32nd day of January, will create a date of 2/1/1969.

• DATE will silently truncate decimal values input into the function, e.g. a month of 12.75 will be interpreted as 12.

• Google Sheets uses the 1900 date system. It counts the days since December 30, 1899 (not including December 30, 1899).

• Between 0 and 1899, Google Sheets adds that value to 1900 to calculate the year. For example, DATE(119,2,1) will create a date of 2/1/2019. 

• For years 1900 to 9999, Google Sheets will use that value as the year. For example, DATE(2019,1,2) will create a date of 1/2/2019. 

• For years less than 0 or greater than 10,000, Google Sheets will return the #NUM! error value.

See Also

TO_DATE: Converts a provided number to a date.

TIME: Converts an hour, minute, and second into a time.

N: Returns the argument provided as a number.

DATEVALUE: Converts a provided date string in a known format to a date value.

Examples

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