Putting a Different Date in a Header

by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 6, 2016)

Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Putting a Different Date in a Header.

Adding the current date to the header of a worksheet is easy—Excel provides a dialog box where you can specify the placement of the date and use the '&[date]' coding to actually insert the date. But what if you want to insert yesterday's date or tomorrow's date into the header?

That's not nearly as easy. In fact, you can't do it without using a macro. Perhaps the most flexible approach is to write the macro so that it updates the date just before the worksheet is printed, as shown in the following:

Private Sub Workbook_BeforePrint(Cancel As Boolean)
  ActiveSheet.PageSetup.CenterHeader = _
    Format(Date - 1, "mmmm d, yyyy")
End Sub

The macro places yesterday's date into the center of the header; you can easily change the CenterHeader property of one of the other available header locations (LeftHeader or RightHeader). You can also change the macro to insert tomorrow's date by changing the "- 1" to "+ 1".

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