Let’s say you have a date in A1 and want to find out future date after 2 years, 4 months and 9 days.
Here are a few formulas you can try.
- =A1 + DATE(2,4,9)
- =EDATE(A1, 2*12+4) + 9
- =A1 + 2*365 + 4*30 + 9
Surprisingly, each formula gives a different result! So which one should you use?
Let’s test them with a sample date to see the results.
Assuming A1 has today’s date, ie 2nd of August, 2016, we get below results respectively.
- 10-NOV-2018
- 11-DEC-2018
- 9-DEC-2018
But which one is the correct answer?
We can use manual calculation to find the correct answer.
Today is 2nd of August 2016, so:
- Adding 2 years to it, we get 2nd of August 2018
- Adding 4 months, we get 2nd of December 2018
- Adding 9 days, we get 11th of December 2018
That means, the correct formula would be =EDATE(A1, 2*12 + 4) + 9
Which one would you use?
My preference is to use EDATE() when doing any date arithmetic that involves months or years. For adding either days, I use simple date + number method. For adding workdays, I use either WORKDAY() or WORKDAY.INTL() formulas.
What about you? What formula would you use to add any number of years, months and days to a give date? Please share your formulas in the comment section.
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If you and Excel are always on a bad date, you could use some advice. Check out below tutorials to have an amazing dating scene.
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This post is part of our Awesome August Excel Festival.
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.