Excel YEAR Function

by | Jan 2, 2024

Excel Year Function

Excel YEAR function plays a key role in date-related operations by efficiently extracting the year from a specified date serial number. In this guide, we will explore the syntax and practical application of the YEAR function, offering valuable tips and error-handling strategies to enhance your proficiency in working with dates within the Excel environment. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced user, this guide aims to provide valuable insights to optimize your date-related calculations. Let's dive in!

Supported Versions of the YEAR Function

  • All Excel versions

The Excel YEAR function is a powerful tool designed to extract the year from a specified date serial number. Let's break down its syntax:

YEAR(serial_number)
  • YEAR: This is the function itself, indicating that you want to extract the year from a given date.
  • serial_number: This is the input parameter representing the date from which you want to retrieve the year. The serial_number can be a direct date entry, a reference to a cell containing a date, or the result of a formula generating a valid date serial number.

In essence, the YEAR function takes a date as its input and returns the corresponding year. This functionality proves particularly useful when you need to work with date-related data in Excel and require a straightforward way to isolate and analyze the year component of a given date.

Arguments

serial_number Actual date from which you want to find the year.


Function Usage

=VLOOKUP(O2,C2:L16,2,FALSE)
 formula searches value of cell O2 ("Alakazam") in first column of the table C2:L16. When [range_lookup] argument is FALSE, the function assumes that the searched value exists in the first column exactly. If the formula finds the value, it returns the value in 2nd column of matched row.

YEAR Example 1

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Tips

  • Excel stores dates as numbers. Excel assumes that the date 1/1/1900 is 1, and increases this number by 1 for each year. For example; 12/31/2018 is equal to 43465. Because of this, avoid using dates as text although the YEAR function can work with dates that match your local format. Use the DATE function to generate Date values.
  • Year of a date can be retrieved using number formatting as well. Use yyyy as Custom Format to display only the year. However, the actual value will remain same, this only changes how data is displayed. For more information see Number Formatting in Excel - All You Need to Know

Issues

Visit Microsoft for support.