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 "November", 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 11/15/2018.
Practice Problem
What is the MONTH for the following serial number?
=MONTH(B1)
This means that the month is July, since the end value is 7!
Next up, let's learn how to use the SUM and AutoSUM functions!
Excel Cram Kit (Exam 1)
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 | Apply | PRACTICE EXCEL EXAM 1 (PREVIEW ONLY) |
 | Tools | Excel Nerd Notes (Exam 1) (PREVIEW ONLY) |
 | Lesson | YEAR, MONTH, DAY |
| Lesson | SUM & AutoSUM |
| Lesson | Relative vs. Absolute Cell References |
| Lesson | RANK |
| Lesson | COUNT |
| Lesson | ROUND |
| Lesson | WEEKDAY vs. WORKDAY (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | VLOOKUP (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | PMT (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | IF (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | Percent change (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | Excel charts (PREVIEW ONLY) |
| Lesson | Importing text files (PREVIEW ONLY) |
Excel Reviews (Exam 1)
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Matt Lamanna
Oct. 14, 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.