Knowing how to use Excel date values can help you save a ton of time in your day to day spreadsheet chores. Let us prepare for your date with the sheet using these 10 handy tips.
Before jumping on to the tips, it helps to know how excel represents the date and time.
Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential numbers … January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and 28 July, 2021 is serial number 44405 because it is 44,405 days after January 1, 1900. Excel stores times as decimal fractions because time is considered a portion of a day.
So you see, Date and Time are in fact numbers in Excel. Just enter a date in your excel sheet and format it as number to see its equivalent numeric value. If a date is 29-July-2021 and Excel represents it as 44406.
Similarly, 9PM on 29-July-2021 is represented as 44406.875
How-to use Excel date values and formulas
Now that you know the little secret behind date / time, lets move to the 10 tips.
1. Test whether a date is future or past
You can find whether a date is past or future or today using simple if formula like: =if(this_date=today(),"Today",if(this_date < today(),"Past","Future"))
today() is the spreadsheet function using which you can find today’s date.
2. Find the number of days between two dates
Since dates are represented as sequential numbers in excel, in order to find out how many days are between any given 2 dates, just subtract one from another. For eg. you can use =today()-date(1947,8,15) to find how many days since India’s independence (August 15, 1947).
3. Formatting dates
Having date / time in the sheet is not enough if you can not make it look like the way you want. For eg. you may want to show date as “Wednesday, 28 July, 2021”. You can use cell formatting to do this. Just select the cell with date and hit ctrl+1 and in the “Number” tab select “Custom” as category and mention “dddd, dd mmmm, yyyy” as format string.
Try these other date formats as well.
Learn more about custom cell formatting.
4. Auto-filling only weekdays
We all know that in order to fill a series of dates in Excel sheet, you just need to enter first few dates and then select the range and drag to auto fill the selection with rest of the dates. But what if you need to fill only weekdays?
You can do that easily with Auto fill option – “weekdays only” as shown on the right. learn more.
5. Find out the day of week from a given date
Finding whether a day is weekend or weekday is useful if you are making project plans or resource allocation sheets. You can do this by simply using weekday() function. For eg. =weekday("07/28/2021") would return 4 (Excel, by default starts the week at Sunday, hence Wednesday is indicated as 4).
If you would like to start the week with Monday like most of us do, use =weekday("07/28/2021",2).
6. Highlight weekends using conditional formatting
Often when you are making project plans or reports, it helps if the weekends or after office hours can be grayed out. You can do this easily with conditional formatting as shown below:
In order to do this, we can test whether a given a day is weekend or not in conditional formatting by =WEEKDAY(this_date,2)>5 as weekday() returns 6 and 7 for Saturday and Sunday.
You can use similar logic to highlight after office hours (before 9AM or after 5PM) for time values. Learn these 5 tips to master conditional formatting.
7. Adding / Subtracting dates
Since Excel dates are nothing but numbers, you can find out the difference between two given dates by just subtracting one from another. For eg. =DATE(2021,7,31)-DATE(2021,7,1) will return 30
In order to add n number of days to a given date, you can just add that number to given date. For eg. ="07/20/2021"+26 will return 08/15/2021
8. Ensuring a valid date or time is entered in a cell
When sharing your sheets with others to enter some data, it may be useful if you can restrict them to enter only valid date values in cells that require date value. You can do that using cell data validation feature in excel. Just select the cell to which you want to apply date / time validation, go to data ribbon > validation and set type as “Date” or “Time” and specify criteria.
For example, you can specify criteria like the one above to ensure that date entered is in year 2018. What more, using message option of data validation settings you can even show messages like this:
9. Insert today’s date, current time using key board shortcuts
Just go to the cell where you want to insert date and press ctrl+;
To get current time, use ctrl+shift+; ( thus ctrl+: )
Btw, if you are planning to get today’s date or current time using formulas, you can use today() and now(). Also learn these 11 very useful excel keyboard shortcuts.
10. Top Date functions for you
Excel has many Date & Time functions. Here is a list of some of the most important ones to help you use date values in Excel.
Date & Time formulas
| To get | Use this | Example Result | Function used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day of week number | WEEKDAY(date) | 4 | WEEKDAY() |
| Month number | MONTH(date) | 7 | MONTH() |
| Year | YEAR(H3) | 2021 | YEAR() |
| Day number | DAY(date) | 28 | DAY() |
| Name of the month | TEXT(date,"MMMM") | July | TEXT() |
| Same day, next month | EDATE(date,1) | 28 August 2021 | EDATE() |
| End of the month | EOMONTH(date,0) | 31 July 2021 | EOMONTH() |
| Current date | TODAY() | 28 July 2021 | TODAY() |
| 7 days from today | TODAY()+7 | 4 August 2021 | TODAY()+7 |
| Gap between two dates | TODAY()-DATE(2021,1,1) | 208 | - (minus) |
| 5 working days from now | WORKDAY(TODAY(),5) | 4 August 2021 | WORKDAY() |
| Number of working days in a month | NETWORKDAYS(DATE(2021,7,1),DATE(2021,7,31)) | 22 | NETWORKDAYS() |
That is all, with these 10 tips I hope I made your date with that spreadsheet is made little exciting.
3 Important Date formulas for finance & accounting people
If you work in finance or accounting professions, using dates is an important part of your job. Apart from all the above tips, you also need to learn how to calculate:
- Quarter from a date (both calendar & financial)
- First working day of a month
- Last working day of a month
See this short video to understand how to calculate these (watch it on my YouTube channel)
Download the file demoed in the video.
Common problems when working with dates in Excel
When using date & time related values or formulas in Excel, often you might notice some problems. Use this check list to fix the problem.
- Excel shows ##### instead of date or time values
This can happen if your cell is too small to show the value. Try adjusting column width.
This can also happen if you use incorrect values as date & time. For example, if you try to format negative numbers as date, you will see ##### - Excel cannot understand my date
When trying to convert a cell or value to date, sometimes Excel cannot understand your input. This is because Excel relies on your regional settings to understand dates. So if your usual date format is mm/dd/yyyy, then Excel expects the cells (or values) to have same format in order to convert them to dates. If you have dd/mm/yyyy values, then Excel may not convert the dates. To fix the problem, read extract dates from text tutorial
Download Date How-to & Tutorial Workbook
Click here download example workbook with several date calculations and format detail. Play with it to learn more.
Learn more about Excel Date & Time functions
- 42 tips for Excel time travelers
- Rounding time to nearest hour or 15 minutes
- How many Mondays are between two dates
- How to highlight overdue dates
Got a problem working with dates? Post it in comments
If you have any date or time related issues, please post a comment so our community or I can help you. Got an interesting tip or formula about working with dates? Please do share it so I can learn from you.
35 Responses to “75 Excel Speeding up Tips Shared by YOU! [Speedy Spreadsheet Week]”
I see most are saying that array formulas are bad. But I thought that when you use array formulas it grabs all the data at once and performs the calculations in one fell swoop. At least that is how the UDFs that I created work. When I did the time test it was much faster that way. Maybe I'll go back and check to make sure my work is right, but that's what I did.
When I work with array formulas I get a full column of data then work on that column and return a full column of data all at once. Which has shown to be much faster than the alternative.
Anyone have special insights on this?
wow..! thats a pretty impressive list, some real gems in there. I read somewhere the other day that spreadsheet development should be 80% planning and 20% implementation - taking the time to think about layout, how you're going to calculate things and how to structure the data often results in a lot less headaches, and more time for deeper analysis...
Hi Chandoo...
Mixed feeling about this article, while I completely agree with you when you share everyone's points under their name giving credit to contributors, but at the same time I see alot of repeated tips and few those may not be applicable under all cases. (I may have sounded harsh). Some kind of sorting of tips were required than mere 3 categorization. (Tough ask, I know). Some really worthy and awesome tips get lost in occean.
I would have been happy to read only non repititive tips and more like standard chandoo articles.
Well, I have also got two tips (may get lost in the list above), which is not presented above:
1. When using too many pivots - Disable data drilling option. This reduces file size, cache memory and speeds up file.
2. If your macro has used too many files for gathering input, close the file and open. This is also release or kill unwanted space in memory and speeds up. Again this can be achieved by macro to close self file and reopen same file, using timer function.
Please do not count me negative.
Regards,
Prasad DN
Hey, one thing that really speeds up VBA processing of data is to extract ranges into arrays & then working on those arrays. Arrays are a lot faster than using cell offset or any other method for working with a database. After you are done you can also paste the value directly into the range with one single command. This will speed up the macros considerably.
Here is a msdn article with examples in it:
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa139976(v=office.10).aspx
Hope this helps
oops, noticed a typo in the tip I posted:
Re directly assigning values in VBA rather than copying & pasting should have read:
Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A200 ").Value
not
Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A100 ").Value
Corrected with double quotes:
Sheet2.Range("B1:B200").Value= Sheet1.Range("A1:A200").Value
[...] posts on speeding up Excel worksheets, one of the posts focuses on formulas and another he let the general readers make their suggestions. I made the suggestion that people use array formulas. But most of the other suggestions said not [...]
OK, I tested it. My UDFs were faster as array functions (like a couple thousand times). But Excel's built in functions are faster when not doing arrays. Not sure this is the case for all situations.
I can't help but to speak up.
Deleting a PivotTable will not speed up your workbook. It will only reduce the file size. There is zero memory processing for a pivot table if it just sits there.
Instead of destroying the pivot table, why not remove the redundant raw data. That would equally reduce the file size of the workbook, while keeping the pivot table functionality.
http://datapigtechnologies.com/blog/index.php/cut-the-size-of-your-pivot-table-workbooks-in-half/
Thanks a lot guys for your valuable tips !!
It really worked for me
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
...
...
...
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
I would add:
Application.StatusBar = "Wait a second..."
............
Application.StatusBar = False
Optimizing Speed using Pivot Tables:
If you find that Pivot Tables are becoming sluggish becomes of the sheer volume of tables there is a way to increase performance. By default (xls 2010) pivot tables are designed to autofit the data within the columns as well as preserving formatting. I discovered that unchecking these two options alone will exponentially increase performance.
Here's how to do it:
Right click on your pivot table(s) --->choose 'Pivot Table Options' -->Layout & Format' Tab --->uncheck two boxes at the bottom. Done!
here is my list:
1. Avoid Variants when possible
2. Use long instead of integer
3. Use double instead of single
4. Use booleans as much as possible
5. pull data into arrays, manipulate, then dump back to workbook
6. use .value2 instead of .value if you are looking at strings or numeric values
7. set object variables
dim Wks as Excel.Worksheet
set wks = thisworkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
8. use with statements...
with wks.cells(x,y)
.value2 = "abcd"
.interior.colorindex=4
with .font
.bold=true
.size =20
.underline=xlunderlinestylesingle
end with
9. use string version of functions (Left$() instead of Left())
10. Test for empty string variables with len() or lenb()...if lenb(String1)=0 then
11. Use the Mid$() function if it is possible instead of split()
12. use the join$() function instead of concatenating strings
13. AscW() to evaluate first characters
14. combine if statements and booleans together
boolean = (lenb(String1) = 0)
16. InStr(), InStrB(), InStrRev() are very fast, InStr() can be used to quickly return a substring occurrence of a string
17. DICTIONARIES!!!!!!!!!!!
18. FileSystemObject
19. My machine runs slightly faster when i fill in all the inputs of a function (instead of InStrB(String1, "abcd"), i use (InStrB(1,String1,"abcd",vbBinaryCompare)
20. Short Circuit If statements: If x = 2 then if y >3 then if z = 5 then b=true or
if x=2 then
if y >3 then
if z=5 then
b=true
c=true
end if
end if
end if
21. use ElseIf
22. my testing indicates ElseIf is slightly faster than a Case Select
23. set strings to empty by: = vbnullstring
24. with application
.screenupdating = false
.displayalerts = false
.enableevents = false
end with
25. UserForms can be very beneficial
26. User-Defined Types are a very neat way to encapsulate data
27. User-Defined Functions are handy, but can increase run-time if called thousands of times
28. if using ElseIfs, nested And Ifs or Select Case statements, put the argument that will occur most frequently at the beginning
29. Looping is not the worst thing...just got to figure out how to do it the most efficiently
30. Use dynamic arrays instead of static arrays
31. if you can figure out Win32 APIs, then they are usually much faster than VBA functions
I worked on a massive spreadsheet and it had become very slow over time as I developed it. I tried stripping down more and more formulas by replacing with pasted values, removed all conditional formatting etc. In the end what finally did the trick was when I removed the last single SUMPRODUCT fomula. It changed the updating time after one change from 7-8 seconds to instantaneously. The SUMPRODUCT I had used the full columns, and if I put it to only look at rows 1-500 it was fine.
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TIPS FOR SPEEDING UP EXCEL
(1) Instead of writing a lot of formulas to organise data, you can VLOOKUP() the data in a Pivot table, thereby combining the advantages of Pivot table and VOOKUP().
(2) If you have a range named ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, then it is not compulsory to use this name when making the worksheet. Naming the range as ‘Tax’ or simply ‘T’ will be sufficient. The formula =SUM(T) will be shorter and easier to use.
After completing typing all the formulas, simply edit the name of the range from ‘T’ to ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, in the name box. The formula =SUM(T) will automatically change to =SUM(TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear).
Vijaykumar Shetye, India
VBA
I don't write many macros and like most of you when doing a recalculation it sometimes takes forever.
I have found that when I looked at my spreadsheet, I could determine which order of calcuations (by column) would produce the least number of iterations. So I wrote a macro to do my calculations on my terms. I picked the order of the columns I wanted to calcuate and it sped up my recalc 5-10X.
I did this so long ago, I believe I used "expression .Calculate".
TIPS TO SPEED UP EXCEL by Vijaykumar Shetye, India
You can view all the formulas in the entire worksheet quickly by pressing [ctrl] and [~] keys simultaneously.
To view results, press the key combination again.
i need help about excle lerning and reports making with dash bord i have no facility to join the on classes.
sajjad.hussain165@gmail.com
Is there any command to get time with seconds
Is there any way to create an excel file for specific time period, afterwards it will not open
[...] are looking for , but give it a try : Optimize Slow VBA Code. Speed Up Efficient VBA Code/Macros 75 Excel Speeding up Tips - How to speed-up & optimize slow Excel workbooks? | Chandoo.org - Lea... [...]
I've had to do a lot of mass calculations for reports etc. that involved repetitive identical, yet complex formulae, which took forever...
I hit on a great time-saver: sort the spreadsheet data; if, for example, the same result was due to a lookup of Hotel Name (A column), Date (B column), and Room Type (F column), the formula (Z column) would be: "=IF(A2&B2&F2=A1&B1&F1,Z1,VLOOKUP(A2&B2&F2,LookUps!A:G,7,FALSE))".
This meant that if the result is the same as the row above, just use the same answer, thus saving loads of time instead of VLOOKUPs. (This is a simplified example, the actual one had INDIRECT(ADDRESS...) in it, too!)
Check files for invalid range names, invalid links and names that aren't needed any longer.
Clearing out some 200 old references in a template made the file open go from 30 seconds to 2.
You can improve the speed by stopping calculation during changing cell value and after that you can enable it. please follow the link.
http://webtech-training.blogspot.in/2013/10/how-to-stop-heavy-formula-calculation.html
[…] 75 Excel Speeding Tips Its a long List, many repeated but worth a visit. […]
[…] 75 Speed-up tips by Chandoo (smartly done by crowd sourcing) […]
[…] Are you opening slow excel files? Use this reference to speed up your excel sheets […]
If you want to highlight the content or result within a cell with colour, use content colour not cell fill colour. This make a large data sheet fast as full colour takes up more resource.
There are already so many useful replies, so don't be mad at me if I repeat someone with the following hints.
While using pivot tables:
1. Link (raw) data from external files, rather then building pivots in the same workbook of the data. => Reduces file size.
2. don't flag "keep source data" in pivot settings. => reduces cache.
Downside is when you want to use slicers, you must allow refresh of the source data and thus people need access to that file.
One extra when using tables above ranges: replace the table header references by cell references in heavy duty formulas. I'm not sure but it seems to be faster and lighter (in #MBs).
hi
iam student and need xloptimizer( no demo) for solving the mathematical model
can you help me
thanks alot
@Reza
We cannot give away XLoptimizer
Why not post a question in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Dear Sir,
Thanks a lot for sharing tips & tricks of excel....
I read it , understand it and then use it in job and that has helped me a lot....
Thanks a lot...
Himanshu.
Mumbai, India.
In VBA, send out values to the worksheet all together as an array then excel will only re-calculate once rather than each time a cell that is output.
to the guy who said avoid looping in VBA - easier said than done, it's one of the most powerful uses for VBA out there. I'd therefore recomend the half way house and break the loop as soon as you've got what you want, don't let it run until the end. Use While etc.
What I would say on VBA in general is minimise sheet to code interations. Suck all your data into a VBA array THEN do the maths don't use cells themselves as stand alone visual variables.
And to the lady who said it's faster offline - that's because Microsoft are constantly contacting their own website be it security verification and/or update checks
Apply some logic to the order of criteria in sumifs / countifs formula
order the most exclusive criteria first. Once one criteria fails the others do not execute.
Bing AI, given the following query, confirms this: "excel countifs. if one criteria is likely to exclude most of the data range then should this criteria go first in the list to prevent frivilous executions".