How to apply conditional formatting to dates within 90 days?

Conditional formatting can be used to quickly highlight dates within 90 days from the current date. To apply conditional formatting to dates, click the cell you want to apply the formatting to then click the Home tab, select Conditional Formatting, New Rule, and select Use a formula to determine which cells to format. Then enter a formula that will format the cell if the date is within 90 days. For example, if the cell contains a date in column A, use the formula =AND(A1<=TODAY()+90,A1>=TODAY()) and select the desired formatting for the cell. This will cause the cell to be highlighted when the date is within 90 days.


To apply conditional formatting to cells that have a date within 90 days 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 90 Days

Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the date that various people applied for some position:

This article is being written on 1/16/2023.

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:B11, 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()-90 in the box, then click the Format button and choose a fill color to use.

Excel conditional formatting for dates within 90 days

Once we press OK, all of the cells in the range B2:B11 that have a date within 90 days of 1/16/2023 will be highlighted:

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

For example, you could type =B2>TODAY()-30 in the conditional formatting rule box to instead highlight cells that have a date within 30 days 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.

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