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.
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.
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Need to know the number of months between two dates? It's easy to figure out if you use the DATEDIF function.
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Discover MoreCalculating an age is a common task when working with dates. If you want to figure out the number of years and months ...
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2018-01-29 11:07:54
Steve Hopper
I encountered this problem when trying to determine someone's age at a 'set point' in time. I found that many of the suggested formulas failed to return the correct age - in certain circumstances. For example; if the set point date was the same day/month as the date of birth it would return the wrong age. I approached the issue from a different angle - by looking at the month. So, if the 'set point' month is after the birth month (i.e. they have already celebrated their birthday for the year) then the age is year of 'set point' minus the year of birth. If the the the person has not had their birthday then it would be year of 'set point' minus year of birth minus one. The only issue is when the months are the same, then you have to look at the day of birth and day of set point. It does create an untidy formula! Place the date of birth in Cell A2 and the date you want to compare it to in Cell B2 The formula would then be;
=IF(MONTH(B2)>MONTH(A2),YEAR(B2)-YEAR(A2),IF(MONTH(B2)<MONTH(A2),YEAR(B2)-YEAR(A2)-1,IF(MONTH(B2)=MONTH(A2),IF(DAY(B2)>=DAY(A2),YEAR(B2)-YEAR(A2),YEAR(B2)-YEAR(A2)-1))))
2016-07-07 02:16:49
Ayen
What aging formula for continues counting of date from the date of encoded and will stop on the given date. Thank you
2016-01-25 07:19:53
Willy Vanhaelen
@Kristi
Change D3 to $D$3
2016-01-23 17:23:34
I need to know how old children are on different dates and would like to plug that date into ONE CELL and have the age re-calculate when I do that. I'm currently using this:
=DATEDIF(B5,D3,"y") & "." & DATEDIF(B5,D3,"ym")
With the date I enter in D3 and DOB in B5). My problem is that I cannot drag this formula for all the children as it changes D3 to D4 and so on. How can I alter the formula so that D3 remains D3? Thank you!
2015-10-24 09:14:57
DEREK GERRY
Jan, Your problem is that the formula you are referencing derives its informaton from Cell A1. If you don't put the pursons birthday in A1, it will return 115. You can also use a different cell, but you will need to alter the formual to reference to it.
2015-08-22 07:23:00
Jan
I have tried the very first tip you give for finding the age of a person as at 1 May and it has come up with a number that doesn't relate to age, well yes it could but at the present moment working on my age I am 115 haha
I have even copied it off your page in case I am doing something incorrect with the formula. Can you help here please.
I need to find out what age people will be at 28 September.
I am sorry to worry you but I can't work it out at all.
Thank you and kind regards
Jan
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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: 
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