Here's How to Use Excel's EDATE Function to Return a Specific Date In the Past or Future

EDATE Function in Excel: This interesting function in Excel App returns a date that is a specified number of months before or after a given start date. To understand it, let’s say your car insurance expires 6 months from today. You can use the EDATE Function in the Excel and get to know date that is 6 months after today. By this way, you don’t have to manually calculate using the Calendar.

Important: The Second Argument in the EDATE Function must be only in Months and it does not accept Days. If you want to add arguments in days, then you can either use the Date or Today Function in the Excel.

EDATE Function – Syntax

=EDATE(start_date, months)

Required Arguements

1. Start_Date – The date you want to count from.
2. Months – The number of months to move forward (positive number) or backward (negative number).

Function Compatibility

EDATE Function was introduced on 2007. From Excel 2010, it became a built-in function. If you are using older Excel Version, then you may encounter XLFN. Kindly refer to our detailed article to get to know more about XLFN.

Basic Usage of EDATE Function on Excel

Using EDATE Function with Practical Examples

Example 1 (Forward Date)

This Function can provide the forward and backward date as well. First, let’s start with the Forward Example.

• Open your Excel Application.
• In the Excel Application, let’s enter the following value to understand the EDATE Function.

=EDATE(TODAY(), 6)

• We want to get the date of 6 months from today. Let’s execute the function in the Excel.

• The above output can be confusing as Excel is displaying the date as a serial number. Don’t worry, it is just not in the Date Format. Kindly follow the below steps to fix this. You can also refer to our detailed article to get to know why this happens:

Fix the Date Format in the EDATE Function

• Go to the Home Tab in the Excel.

• Under Number Format Section, select Short Date instead of General or Number.

• Now, execute the EDATE Function again in a different cell.
• Excel will display the proper output in the Date Format.

Example 2 (Backward Date)

In the Excel Application, execute the following EDATE Function with specified arguments. =EDATE(TODAY(), -1). From todays’ date, we are subtracting 1 month and provide the exact date.

EDATE Function backward Date Output

Practical Scenarios & Real World Applications of EDATE Function

Note: For the above examples, let’s assume the date is specified in the A1 Cell.

That’s it.