DAY Formula - PK: An Excel Expert

Definition

Kicking things off, the DAY formula in Excel allows you to extract the day of a date. This flexible formula can handle dates in various formats.

Purpose

The purpose of the DAY formula is to help you get the day from a date in a spreadsheet. It becomes a handy tool when you need to analyze or categorize data based on days.

Syntax

Here’s the simple syntax of the DAY formula:

=DAY(serial_number)

Parameters

The DAY formula takes just one parameter:

Serial_number – This is the date from which you want to extract the day.

Returns

As you might expect, the DAY formula returns the day of the given date, ranging from 1 to 31.

Usage notes

One key point to remember is that the DAY formula can be combined with other Excel formulas for more complex date calculations.

Availability

You can find the DAY formula in all versions of Excel.

Example #1

Consider you want to extract the day from the date in cell A2. You can use the DAY formula as follows:

=DAY(A2)

This formula will return the day of the date in A2.

Example #2

Suppose you want to extract the day from a hard-coded date. The DAY formula can be used like this:

=DAY("2023-12-25")

This formula will return the day 25 from the date.

Example #3

In our third example, we’re going to use the DAY formula with the TODAY formula:

=DAY(TODAY())

This formula will return the current day.

Example #4

Let’s extract the day from a date given in the European date format (DD/MM/YYYY):

=DAY(DATEVALUE("25/12/2023"))

This formula will return the day 25 from the given date.

Example #5

For our final example, we will combine the DAY formula with the TEXT formula to get the day name:

=TEXT(A2,"dddd")

Here, if A2 contains a date, the formula will return the day name.

Tips and tricks

An interesting trick is to use the DAY formula with the EOMONTH formula to get the number of days in a month.

Limitations

One key limitation of the DAY formula is that it can only handle valid Excel dates (between January 1, 1900, and December 31, 9999).

Common errors and solutions

One common error when using the DAY formula is providing a non-date value as the input. This will return a #VALUE! error. So always ensure that the input is a valid date.

Best Practices

A best practice when using the DAY formula is to always validate the input date. Also, when dealing with strings that look like dates, use the DATEVALUE formula to convert them to Excel dates first.