Still feeling nervous for your exam? Check out the Excel Cram Kit (Exam 1) for practice modules that emulate the difficulty that you'll face on your exam. Each module includes a thorough step-by-step explanation where I walk you through the entire problem solving process!
YEAR, MONTH, & DAY explained
These Excel formulas are pretty self explanatory, but for the sake of explaining it with a real-world example, check out the below calendar.

What if I were to ask you the year of the circled day? You would answer "2018".
The YEAR function returns the year for a given timestamp.
What's the circled day's month? It's in "October", or the "11th" month of the year.
The MONTH function returns the month for a given timestamp.
And lastly, what's the day for the circled date? It's the "15th" day of the month.
The DAY function returns the day in number form for a given timestamp.
Coding with YEAR, MONTH, & DAY
Let's see how this works with the same date above, but in an Excel worksheet.

YEAR coded
Here is the template for the YEAR function:
=YEAR(serial_number)
To determine the year of the given date, we'd code the following...
=YEAR(B1)
...which would result in:

MONTH coded
The template for MONTH is:
=MONTH(serial_number)
So, for our month, we'd type the following:
=MONTH(B1)
This would result in...

DAY coded
Lastly, here's the template for DAY:
=DAY(serial_number)
To determine the day of the month for the timestamp, we'd code this:
=DAY(B1)
This code turns into the following output:

Based on this result, we are able to understand that 43419 represents 11/16/2018.
Practice Problem
What is the MONTH for the following serial number?

Excel (Exam 1) Follow-along Guide
It's no secret you retain info better when you write it down. That's why I created the Excel (Exam 1) Follow-along Guide for you!

As you come upon key concepts highlighted in yellow, like this sentence here, you can fill-in-the-blanks on your Follow-along Guide so that you remember all the important stuff for later!
You can obtain the Excel (Exam 1) Follow-along Guide for FREE by entering your email below!
Next up, let's learn how to use the SUM and AutoSUM functions!
Free Resources
Each exam concept broken down in simple, real-world examples!
![]() | Tools | Excel (Exam 1) Follow-along Guide |
![]() | Lesson | YEAR, MONTH, DAY |
![]() | Lesson | SUM & AutoSUM |
![]() | Lesson | Relative vs. Absolute Cell References |
![]() | Lesson | RANK |
![]() | Lesson | COUNT |
![]() | Lesson | ROUND |
![]() | Lesson | WEEKDAY vs. WORKDAY |
![]() | Lesson | VLOOKUP |
![]() | Lesson | PMT |
![]() | Lesson | IF |
![]() | Lesson | Percent change |
![]() | Lesson | Excel charts |
![]() | Lesson | Importing text files |
Practice Problems
Step-by-step walkthrough for each of the questions you need to be ready for!

"I bought this Cram Kit the night before my exam, and it helped me tremendously. It provides step-by-step explanations for all the units covered in class."
Matt Lamanna
Oct. 24, 2021

I’m a Miami University (OH) 2021 alumni who majored in Information Systems. At Miami, I tutored students in Python, SQL, JavaScript, and HTML for 2+ years. I’m a huge fantasy football fan, Marvel nerd, and love hanging out with my friends here in Chicago where I currently reside.