A critical part of working with Excel is understanding how to put together formulas that will allow you to manipulate data into the form that you need. One of the most common of these is adding days to a date.

That is, given a date in one format, how do you get it into another? While there are different formulas for different things.

Adding days to a date in excel is a common business requirement and is not all that tricky to do with a little bit of formatting and a function.

This blog will show you how to add days to a date in excel with a simple example.

Different ways to add Days to Date in Excel

An Excel spreadsheet is like an annotated book. The book contains ingredients (information) and instructions (formulas).

Keeping track of data in Excel has one major advantage over other methods. You can quickly create customized sheets based on your data, or update data by using formulas.

You can calculate the time it takes to get to work in the morning by subtracting the minutes it takes to travel there from your cell phone’s alarm clock, multiply your annual income with an interest rate percentage to get an idea of how much interest you’ll pay back on your car loan.

You can also find how to add days to date in an excel sheet. I have explained the different ways to add days to a date in excel.

Use a Formula

Use a simple formula to add or subtract the number of days to a given date. In Excel, dates are actually numbers that represent a combined date and time value.

Change the cell format from Date to General or Number to see those 1-day numbers between 1 through 40,000+.

This is the number of days that have elapsed since January 1, 1900 – which is the starting point for dates in Excel.

Each Day represents a whole number which we can easily offset by adding or subtracting a whole number.

In the example below, we use a simple formula to reference the cell that contains the date (A2) and add 1 to it. Now copy the formula down to create a column of new dates with one day added to them.

Then you’ll want to copy and paste values over the existing date column or cells for this update.

The easiest way is if your data is the source of a pivot table and you’d like your reports to also use this existing date field.

Paste Special Operation

There are instances where you simply can’t create an array formula or it’s just not the most efficient way to go about things. This is when using the Paste Special feature can come in handy.

The Paste Special feature has operations that allow one to manipulate large sets of data via easy copy and pasting options instead of always having to “design” your formulas from scratch with array formulas.

The date addition can be found in the Time tab. Select the cells that contain the dates. Right-click and choose Number > More Functions > Date.

Press OK or press Enter after that. Copy the cell (Right-click > Copy or Ctrl +C). Select the cells that contain the number of days to add to each date.

Right-click and choose Paste Special (keyboard shortcut: Alt, E, S). Select whatever button looks like a paintbrush (usually found in the lower-left corner) in the Paste section on the Paste Special menu (keyboard shortcut: V).

Depending on whether you want to add or subtract days to each date, select the Add Days radio button (keyboard shortcut: D).

VBA Macro

If this is a task you do frequently or want your users to be able to add days from the existing project due dates, then a macro is a great solution. A macro can modify a value in a cell by adding a specific number of days.

FAQs Related to the Topic

How do I add 30 days to a date in Excel?

To subtract 15 days from an initial date, type =A1-15 in cell B1. Then press RETURN. This formula is basically adding a negative 15 to the initial date. To add 30 days to an initial date, just type =A1+30 into cell C1.

How do I add 90 days to a date in Excel?

Click the Date Picker button at the top of your spreadsheet to enable a drop-down calendar. Click any cell where you would like to get the calendar popup and choose Select Date from Calendar from the pop-up menu.

The upper pane will let you choose if you want to add days, weeks, months, or years.

Conclusion

This guide explains how to add days to a date in Excel. There are a number of ways you can do this, from using the built-in TODAY function to adding a date from a cell, to combining the TODAY function with the DATE function.

The key is knowing how to use Excel’s date functions, which is what this article helps you with. The best way to add days to a date in Excel is through the use of the paste special operation.

This function takes any date and adds days to it. Using this function, you can add a specific number of days to a date.

This function has a few different arguments that you can use to customize it to your needs. I hope that you will understand.

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