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Spreadsheet Basics

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The EDATE Function

2:18 with Michael Watson

EDATE is a useful way to save yourself time from having to write out dates repeatedly. EDATE uses months, and calculates time differences based on a value in months that you enter into the formula.

Example Files

  • you can continue to use the spreadsheet from the last video, or
  • open a copy of this spreadsheet to catch up to this video

Reference

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    Being able to work with dates in spreadsheets is really important. 0:00
    And it's particularly useful for financial modeling purposes, for 0:04
    example, when calculating interest payments based on days in a month or year. 0:08
    EDATE is a useful way to save yourself time from having to write out dates repeatedly. 0:13
    This is useful if you are building a spreadsheet that covers multiple 0:18
    time periods, or has to be consistently updated over time. 0:20
    Let's take a look at an example of EDATE. 0:24
    First, I'm just gonna enter a random date, January 1st, 2017, completely arbitrary. 0:26
    Then, let's look through the syntax of EDATE. 0:34
    EDATE uses months and calculates time differences based on 0:37
    a value in months that you enter into the formula. 0:40
    So, I write out EDATE parentheses. 0:42
    Then as you can see, it asks start date, comma, then months. 0:47
    A positive number in the months section indicates the number of months 0:52
    after the supplied date. 0:56
    A negative number will give you a month or months before the supplied date. 0:57
    So, here I'm gonna select Jan 1, 2017 as my start date, 1:02
    and then I'm gonna add 1 for one additional month. 1:06
    If I enter -6 here, it'll give me July of 2016. 1:12
    I'll put it back to 1, and copy this out. 1:22
    So as you can see, we have all the dates for the entire year, and 1:29
    I didn't have to manually enter those every single time. 1:32
    EDATE can be a big time saver for you. 1:36
    So now we have all the months for 1:38
    the year, but let's say you don't wanna progress by month, that's okay. 1:40
    Instead of using EDATE, you can just reference the date that you're interested 1:44
    as your start date, and you can simply add 1 for a day. 1:49
    There you go. 1:53
    Now you have January 2nd and you can just copy that formula all the way down. 1:54
    So if you're updating the spreadsheet for your boss that you have daily updates, 1:59
    you can just put this formula instead of having to manually enter the date 2:04
    each time. 2:07
    You know, it doesn't have be one day, it can be a week. 2:08
    And there you go, you have a similar situation. 2:14

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