Here is a handy trick to calculate last day of any month.
Assuming y and m contain the year & month for which you want to find the last day’s date, write
=DATE(y, m+1,0)
That is right, you can use ZERO (0) as the day.
When you do this, Excel tells us the last day of previous month.
How to calculate last day if I have a date in that month:
Instead of year and month, if you know a date & you want to find what is the last date… then use:
=EOMONTH(date, 0)
How to calculate the last working day of a month?
If you just care about working days.. then use:
=WORKDAY(DATE(y,m+1,1), -1)
This will give us the last working day of a month.
Dealing with holidays:
Very simple. Pass on a list of holidays to WORKDAY as last parameter. Like this:
=WORKDAY(DATE(y,m+1,1), -1, F1:F20)
This assumes, F1:F20 has a list of holiday dates.
Dealing with different weekend types:
Not everyone observes Saturday & Sunday as weekend. For example, I do not work on Tuesdays. You might have Sunday thru Thursday work week. If so,
use WORKDAY.INTL function, like this:
=WORKDAY.INTL(DATE(y,m+1,1), -1, 7)
Weekend type 7 is for Friday & Saturday weekend.
How do you calculate last date of a month?
Do you use some other formula to do this? Please share your tip using comments.
Work with dates often?
If you work with dates, then spend some time reading these tips:














11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.