Excel is a powerful tool for managing data and calculations, but sometimes it can be tricky to figure out how to perform certain functions. One common task is subtracting months from a date, which can be useful for things like calculating due dates or expiration dates. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to subtract months in Excel using the “edate” function.
To begin, let’s imagine that we have a list of book club members and the date of their last payment. We want to calculate the date when their next payment is due, which will be 12 months from their last payment. To do this, we’ll use the “edate” function.
The “edate” function takes two arguments: the start date and the number of months to add or subtract. In our case, the start date is the date of the member’s last payment, and we want to add 12 months to it. We could hard-code the value of 12 into the formula, but it’s better practice to refer to a cell containing that value instead. This way, if we need to change the length of our membership later on, we only need to update one cell.
Once we’ve entered the “edate” formula with the appropriate arguments, we can copy it down to calculate the due date for each member’s next payment. However, because we’re referring to a cell containing the number of months to add, we need to fix that reference before copying the formula down. We can do this by using the F4 key on our keyboard to add dollar signs to the cell reference.
In addition to adding months to a date, we can also use the “edate” function to subtract months from a date. To do this, we simply enter a negative value for the number of months to add. For example, if we wanted to calculate the date that was 12 months before a particular date, we would enter “-12” as the second argument in our formula.
Finally, it’s worth noting that we can use the “edate” function to add or subtract years as well, by multiplying the number of months by 12. For example, if we wanted to calculate the due date for a payment that was three years from the last payment, we would enter “36” (i.e. 12 months x 3 years) as the second argument in our formula.
In conclusion, the “edate” function in Excel is a powerful tool for adding or subtracting months, and even years, from a given date. By using a cell reference for the number of months, we can easily update our calculations if our membership length changes. We hope you found this guide useful for your Excel calculations!