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 the Day of the Year.

Calculating the Day of the Year

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 12, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


You've probably seen it on calendars before—some include an indication that "Today is the 123 day of the year with 242 remaining." You can easily calculate the day number of a year, as well as how many are remaining. For instance, let's assume you have a date in cell D27. You could use the following formulas to calculate, respectively, what day of the year it is and how many are still left:

=D27-"12/31/2008"
="12/31/2009"-D27

The reason that the first formula uses a date of 12/31/2008 is so the result will show the actual day number. Using these formulas, the result of 1/1/2009 in cell D27 would result in 1, meaning it is the first day of the year. (This is as it should be.)

Of course, once you enter the formulas, you need to format the cells as regular numbers. (Excel will, by default, try to format the cells as dates.) With the two cells selected, follow these steps:

  1. Choose the Cells option from the Format menu. Excel displays the Format Cells dialog box.
  2. Make sure the Number tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.

  4. In the Category list, choose Number.
  5. Make sure the Decimal Places option is set to 0.
  6. Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2931) 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 the Day of the Year.

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

Adding Borders to Cell Contents

Word allows you to quickly add borders to cells in a table, but you may not know that you can also add borders to the ...

Discover More

Changing Column Width

When creating a worksheet, you often need to adjust the width of columns so your data looks great. Here's how to quickly ...

Discover More

Getting Rid of Section Breaks, but Not Section Formatting

Word allows you to change the character of how your pages are designed by using multiple sections in a document. If you ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Inserting Tomorrow's Date

You can use a couple of different worksheet functions to enter today's date in a cell. What if you want to calculate ...

Discover More

Calculating Months for Billing Purposes

Different businesses have different ways to calculate elapsed time for billing purposes. Figuring out a formula that ...

Discover More

Displaying a Number as Years and Months

How do you display a number of years, such as 3.67 years, as a number of years and months? It's simple to do with a ...

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 2 + 4?

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.