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.
41 Responses to “SQL Queries from Excel”
I use this method very often.
I always use =SUBSTITUTE (ColumnWithText,"'","''")
to be sure that potential apostrophe in text columns are doubled as required in SQL.
Awesome ! I don't use excel very often so the substitute thing is gold to me 🙂 thanks !
@Leonid.. that is a good technique to use substitute to clean up text apostrophes. thanks
Goal:
Generate update statement in excel where the columns that can be updated are dynamic
You want the columns which are not updated to keep the same value
(or not be overwritten with NULL values with the new generated statement)
the statement can be applied to multiple rows in excel for the same column headers
(This is why the '$' exist for the column headers that are being set)
A1 = First_Name
B1 = Last_Name
C1 = Middle_Name
="
UPDATE PERSONS "&CHAR(10)&
" SET 1 = 1 "&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,"",", "&$A$1&" = '"&$A2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,"",", "&$B$1&" = '"&$B2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,"",", "&$C$1&" = '"&$C2&"'"&CHAR(10))&
" WHERE name = 'staticordynamicvalue' AND gender = 'staticordynamicvalue'
"
Output (if all columns are set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe',
Last_Name = 'ORien',
Middle_Name = 'Richard'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Output (if only First _Name (A1) is set):
UPDATE PERSONS SET 1 = 1,
First_Name = 'Joe'
WHERE age = 28 AND gender = 'm'
Possibly my post above is confusing without the actual table to look at. I will do the same example with the table used here. Instead of an insert statement I will generate an update statement for the columns, Cust_Name, Phone & E-mail
where we can generate an update statement for any column individually or together. 🙂 I hope this can help.
=”
UPDATE table “&CHAR(10)&
” SET 1 = 1 “&CHAR(10)&
IF(LEN(TRIM($A2))=0,”",”,Cust_Name = ‘”&$B3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($B2))=0,”",”, Phone = ‘”&$C3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
IF(LEN(TRIM($C2))=0,”",”, E-mail = ‘”&$D3&”‘”&CHAR(10))&
” WHERE Cust_Name = ’Bill Gates'
”
Thanks, it has been very useful !
It saved me at least 30 minutes, and time is the most expensive thing in our world...
Hey Paul,
What if any of A2, B2, or C2 is a date field?
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?
Even I faced the same problem. If any of the above columns are date, it is taken as string. Any work around for this?
I've found the string concatenation method works well.
At the risk of sounding spammy I would mention that
if it's something your are doing regularly it might be worth investigating a tools
that make it easier, such as QueryCell, an excel add-in I've developed.
It gives you a right click menu option that will produce and then customize insert statements for the selected region of Excel data.
Cheers
Sam
Hi,
For inserting the excel data to your SQL table, you can create insert statements in excel file according to your columns.
then just execute the statements all at once, it will insert the required data to sql server table.
thanks,
How...?
I tried to generate t-sql insert queries from the above example
="insert into values('" &A2 &"','" & B2& "');"
but it generates on one record instead of all records from excel sheet.
I'm using Excel 2003 and the excel sheet contains 922 records.
Most data bases can generate DDL for any object but not a lot of them allow generation of INSERT statements for the table data.
The workaround is to make use of ETL Tools for transferring data across servers. However, there exists a need to generate INSERT statements from the tables for porting data.
Simplest example is when small or large amount of data needs to be taken out on a removable storage media and copied to a remote location, INSERT..VALUES statements come handy.
There is a number of scripts available to perform this data transformation task. The problem with those scripts that all of them database specific and they do not work with textiles
Advanced ETL processor can generate Insert scripts from any data source including text files
http://www.dbsoftlab.com/generating-insert-statements.html
Super Aiticle. Thanks for this post.
I used to deal with the same problem, until found this awsome and free tool.
http://www.xtrategics.com/shapp/String%20Handler.application
regards,
Hi ,
i need a sql query to update a DB in excel 2010..
i have the query(SQL) for insert in excel as ,
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');"
similarly i need q sql query for update in excel
i want clear formulas only for insert,delete,update,select
Hi !
I would like to thank you so much ! This trick saves me a lot of time. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it !
-Ankit
You may like to take advantage of this unique tool 'Excel to Database'.
(free for 60 days)http://leansoftware.net The Excel-to-Database utility enables you to validate and transfer data from Microsoft Excel or text file to a database table or stored procedure process. Any text data can be pasted into the application, this may be from another Excel sheet or from text files such as CSV format. SQL Server, Access, MySQL, FoxPro .. Application features Some unique features of Excel to Database include: ?Easy to use color coded/traffic light data validation ?Data is validated as soon it is typed or pasted into Excel ?Upload Excel data to a table or stored procedure process ?Allow default values ?Mandatory/must have fields can be specified ?Allow user friendly column names ?Allow excel formula / calculated fields ?Multiple database type support: Microsoft SQL Server, Access, MySQL and others (to be tested) ?Supports Custom SQL scripts, with SQL/Excel merge fields ?Database validation checks ensure you comply with any rules defined within the database ?Multiple Task configuration ?For co-operative use, Tasks can be shared across a network ?Task configuration is password protected http://leansoftware.net
Its works fine for single record.
I want to update 1000 records in DB. Can you help me.
[...] [...]
Excel database tasks 2.3 (EDT)
you can now load directly from any source into Excel, validate and upload to most SQL database platforms including SQL Server with automatic transaction wrapping.
You can also use EDT as a multi-user application by easily designing your own Edit data tasks and deploying EDT on your users workstations.
Automatically creates UPDATE/INSERT statements based on the primary key. Default SQL can be modified as you require.
Makes the best use if Excel power - formatting, formula, validation, conditional formatting.. without creating any problematic spreadsheets!
Release details on the blog:
http://leansoftware.net/forum/en-us/blog.aspx
Thanks for the interest
Richard
Thanks for the valueable information, it really help me alot.
Thanks again.
As I do with a field of type date?
= "UPDATE SET business datetime =" & "'" & A2 & "' WHERE ID =" & B2 & ""
the date is not 03/10/2012 is 41246. Even putting quotes ...
Please show how to do it properly with dates as well as when those dates are empty. Thanks!
In a separate column make the date to Text using below formula
=TEXT(C2,"mm/dd/yyyy") Then Refer this text column in your update statement
Great post saved me a a load of time on a task i had to complete
thanks for sharing article... helpful!
Thanks 🙂
Hello,
Nice article.
I have also created one tool for create table script using excel http://devssolution.com/create-table-in-sql-using-excel/
Please check it.
Thanks & Regards,
Sandeep Bhadauriya
[…] Excel formula used – http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/09/22/sql-insert-update-statements-from-csv-files/ […]
If any one can help me out with following.
I want to know a SQL query of below excel formula:
=LOOKUP(0,-SEARCH(LEFT(F2,LEN($B$2:$B$100))+0,$B$2:$B$100),$A$2:$A$100)
Excel data is as below;
Name Codes
names1 992
names2 57
names3 856
names4 297
names5 63
if there is a number (29756789) then it should search in sql by taking the prefix of number (297) from (29756789) and return the name field (name4).
Codes can be of two digit or three.
Thanks
Here is a link to an Online automator to convert CSV files to SQL Insert Into statements:
CSV-to-SQL: http://csv-to-sql.herokuapp.com
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1570387/how-to-insert-data-from-an-excel-sheet-into-a-database-table/37409790#37409790
="INSERT INTO table VALUES (" &A3 &",'" & B3 & "','"&C3&"','" & D3 & "','" & E3 & "'," & F3 & "," & G3 & "," & H3 & ",'" & I3 & "'," & J3 & ");"
B3 has date data that looks like 9/22/17 but with the formula above b3 is coming out as 43000?
how do i fix that?
I just want to insert the Excel records in Sql table without Visiting SQL.
basically i m just want to run a command in Excel Only.
Help Me..plz..?
Hi I have a question maybe you guys have an answer for me
="insert into customers values('" &B3 &"','" & C3 & "','"&D3&"');" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
the above technique works but is there a way to write it so it takes a range instead of individual columns. because I have an extremely wide table
="insert into customers values(B3:D3);" where B3, C3, D3 refer to above table data.
Awsome
Its Great Effort to help everyone who working with excel.
Thanks for the mini-tutorial on SQL from Excel. Didi it several years ago, but couldn't remember the syntax! All the dialogue was really helpful as well!
The formula above is taking date as string. Any solution?