How to Use Excel's EDATE Function
Excel's EDATE function calculates a date that is a specified number of months before or after a specified date. It is frequently used to determine due dates that occur on the same day of the month as the start date.
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Instructions
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Learn the syntax of EDATE. It is EDATE(start_date, months) where start_date is a date and months is a number of months before or after start_date.
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Enter start_date using the DATE function or some other function that returns a date. This will guarantee that start_date is in date format and prevent the problems that can occur when a date is entered as text. EDATE will return the #VALUE! error value if start_date is not a valid date.
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Use a positive number for months to represent a future date and a negative number to represent a past date. Months will be truncated if an integer isn't entered.
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Observe the way Excel stores dates internally. A date is stored as a positive integer representing the number of days beginning with a default date. Windows uses January 1, 1900, as serial number 1 and Excel for the Macintosh uses January 2, 1904, as serial number 1.
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Study some examples of EDATE by entering 01/15/2008 as a date in cell A2. Example 1: EDATE(A2,1) will return February 15, 2008, because this is one month after January 15, 2008. Example 2: EDATE(A2,-1) will return December 15, 2007, because this is one month before January 15, 2008. Note the use of a negative integer to obtain a past date in this example.
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