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: Calculating an Age On a Given Date.

Calculating an Age On a Given Date

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 10, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Alan is president of the local Little League baseball team, and he needs to know the ages of each child on May 1 of each year. He wonders if there is a formula that will return the age on that day.

There are actually a couple of ways you can approach the task. Assuming that the child's birth date is in cell A1, you could use the following formula in most instances:

=(DATE(YEAR(NOW()),5,1)-A1)/365.25

This formula calculates the date serial number (used by Excel internally) for May 1 in the current year. It then subtracts the birth date in A1 from that serial number. This results in the number of days between the two dates. This is then divided by 365.25, an approximate number of days in each year.

For most birth dates, this formula will work fine. If you want something more precise (the imprecision is introduced by the way in which leap days occur), then you can rely on the DATEDIF function in your formula:

=DATEDIF(A1,"5/1/" & YEAR(NOW()),"y")

This returns the age of the person as of May 1 of the current year. If you want even more detail in the results, try this formula:

=DATEDIF(A1,"5/1/" & YEAR(TODAY()),"y") & " years, "
& DATEDIF(A1,"5/1/" & YEAR(TODAY()),"ym") & " months, "
& DATEDIF(A1,"5/1/" & YEAR(TODAY()),"md") & " days"

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (5415) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Calculating an Age On a Given Date.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Adjusting the Width of Characters

Need to adjust how your characters look horizontally? Word provides an easy way you can scale the horizontal appearance ...

Discover More

Changing the Default Text Import Delimiter

When importing text into your worksheet, Excel defaults to using a comma as a delimiter. If you would prefer a different ...

Discover More

Years in Which a Date Occurred on a Particular Day

If you need to know the years in which a particular date occurred on a specific day of the week, there are a number of ...

Discover More

Save Time and Supercharge Excel! Automate virtually any routine task and save yourself hours, days, maybe even weeks. Then, learn how to make Excel do things you thought were simply impossible! Mastering advanced Excel macros has never been easier. Check out Excel 2010 VBA and Macros today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Determining Month Names for a Range of Dates

Given a starting date and an ending date, you may want to generate the names of all the months between those two dates. ...

Discover More

Converting Coded Dates into Real Dates

Sometimes the format in which you receive data is not the same format that would be optimal for Excel. For instance, you ...

Discover More

Calculating the Last Day in a Week Number

Given a particular week number for a year, you may want to figure out the date of the last day in that week. There is no ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 8 - 5?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.