In Excel, the best way for this is to write a formula to count days from date to today in Excel and for this, you need to specify a date for which you want to create the countdown. Along with that, you need to use the TODAY function.
When you deduct the future date from today’s date, it returns the remaining days. As you are using TODAY which is volatile and updates the date every day. It creates a countdown for the remaining days.
In this tutorial, we will learn to write this formula.
Let’s say you manage projects at work and want to track how long each project has been running. Each project has a start date, and you need to know how many days have passed since each project started until today.
Get Count of Days from Date to Today in Excel
You can use the below steps:
- First, enter (=) equals in a cell to start the formula.
- After that, refer to the cell where you have the date.
- Next, enter the (-) sign for subtraction.
- Now, enter the TODAY function without any argument.
- In the end, hit enter to get the result.
Once you hit enter, it returns the count of days which are remaining from the future date you have specified.
=A1-TODAY()
In this example, the date is 10-Feb-2023, and the date returned by TODAY is 18-Jan-2023.
And when you deduct it from the future date, you get the remaining days.
As I mentioned earlier, TODAY is a volatile function, and when the date changes in your system, it also changes the date returned by it which makes it a countdown.
To make the result of the formula more meaningful you can combine it with the test value.
=A1-TODAY()&" day(s) remaning."
Other Formulas to Get the Count of Days from a Date to Today
- Using DATEDIF() Function
- =DATEDIF(start_date, TODAY(), “d”).
- This formula helps you count the number of days that have passed from a specific start date to the current day. You can specify the start date in start_date. The TODAY() part automatically uses today’s date. The “d” tells Excel that you want the difference in days.
- Using NETWORKDAYS() Function –
- =NETWORKDAYS(start_date, TODAY())
- This formula calculates the weekdays between a start date and today, skipping weekends. You can specify start_date with the cell that contains your starting date. This formula is handy for tracking the number of actual workdays in a project’s duration, helping you manage timelines and count of business days from today. It ensures that only Monday through Friday are counted.
- Using NETWORKDAYS.INTL Function – This allows you to define which days of the week are considered weekends (e.g. if you’re in a region where weekends are Friday and Saturday).
Create a Custom Function to Count Days
You can also use a VBA code to create a custom function that counts the days from a given date to today. This function can be easily used in any Excel worksheet, just like any built-in function after you’ve added it to the VBA editor.
Function DaysFromToDate(startDate As Date) As Long
' This function calculates the number of days from the given start date to today.
' It returns the difference as a long integer.
' Check if the input is actually a date
If IsDate(startDate) Then
' Calculate the difference in days from the start date to today's date
DaysFromToDate = DateDiff("d", startDate, Date)
Else
' Return an error value if the input is not a valid date
DaysFromToDate = CVErr(xlErrValue)
End If
End Function =DaysFromToDate(A1)