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Thread ID: 118693 2011-06-17 02:59:00 comparing dates in excel Buff_K (691) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1209911 2011-06-17 02:59:00 Dear god I need some help on this, this is doing my head in....

I have extensively googled this and tried various approaches to no avail.

I have a column of dates in general format, I want to compare them with todays date say, if its greater than returns 1, less than returns 0.

the latest attempt:
=IF(G2>AB2,"y","n")
just returns 'n' no matter what I make AB2

If I try and change the cells to Date format it then just returns a "Y'.

I dunno what I'm doing wrong.

The date column is imported from another system thats why its in general format as 02.03.2011.

would really appreciate any help.
Thanks!
Buff_K (691)
1209912 2011-06-17 03:46:00 Try putting the format into a proper excel formula =date(yyyy.mm,dd) SolMiester (139)
1209913 2011-06-17 04:34:00 Try a find & replace (CTRL + H) on the 02.02.2011 etc (replace . with / to give a 'proper' date format) becomes 02/02/2011.

This worked for me. Would not work with the date format you have (02.02.2011).

Formula I used was: =if(A1>today(),"yes","no") where A1 contains the date to compare to today.
ManUFan (7602)
1209914 2011-06-17 04:53:00 If you have no control over the imported text & you have to re-import it (so doing the Ctrl+H thing every time is impractical), you can dynamically convert to date format before doing the comparison using the formula:

DATEVALUE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,".","/"))

So in your example, you'd end up with

=IF(DATEVALUE(SUBSTITUTE(G2,".","/"))>AB2,"y","n")

(assuming G2 was your imported date)
MushHead (10626)
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