CFI-Excel-eBook

The Corporate Finance Institute Excel
Things to remember about the YEAR Function
1. Dates should be supplied to Excel functions as either:
• Serial numbers; or
• Reference to cells containing dates; or
• Date values returned from other Excel formulas.
If we try to input dates as text, then there is a risk that Excel may
misinterpret them, due to the different date systems or date interpretation
settings on your computer.
2. The value returned by the YEAR function will be Gregorian values
regardless of the display format for the supplied date value.
3. The YEAR function perfectly understands dates in all possible formats.
4. If we wish to see only year for dates stored, we can format the cells
accordingly. In this case, no formula is needed. We can just open the
Format Cells dialog by pressing Ctrl + 1. After that select the Custom
category on the Number tab, and enter one of the codes below in the Type
box:
• yy – to display 2-digit years, as 00-99.
• yyyy – to display 4-digit years, as 1900-9999.
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