by If you are a regular visitor of this blog, you've probably noticed a few articles covering different aspects of Excel conditional formatting. And now we will leverage this knowledge and create spreadsheets that differentiate between weekdays and weekends, highlight public holidays and display a coming deadline or delay. In other words, we are going to apply Excel conditional formatting to dates.
If you have some basic knowledge of Excel formulas, then you are most likely familiar with some of date and time functions such as NOW, TODAY, DATE, WEEKDAY, etc. In this tutorial, we are going to take this functionality a step further to conditionally format Excel dates in the way you want.
Excel conditional formatting for dates (built-in rules)
Microsoft Excel provides 10 options to format selected cells based on the current date.
- To apply the formatting, you simply go to the Home tab > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules and select A Date Occurring.
- Select one of the date options from the drop-down list in the left-hand part of the window, ranging from last month to next month.
- Finally, choose one of the pre-defined formats or set up your custom format by choosing different options on the Font, Border and Fill tabs. If the Excel standard palette does not suffice, you can always click the More colors… button.
- Click OK and enjoy the result! : )
However, this fast and straightforward way has two significant limitations - 1) it works for selected cells only and 2) the conditional format is always applied based on the current date.
Excel conditional formatting formulas for dates
If you want to highlight cells or entire rows based on a date in another cell, or create rules for greater time intervals (i.e. more than a month from the current date), you will have to create your own conditional formatting rule based on a formula. Below you will find a few examples of my favorite Excel conditional formats for dates.
How to highlight weekends in Excel
Regrettably, Microsoft Excel does not have a built-in calendar similar to Outlook's. Well, let's see how you can create your own automated calendar with quite little effort.
When designing your Excel calendar, you can use the =DATE(year,month,date) function to display the days of the week. Simply enter the year and the month's number somewhere in your spreadsheet and reference those cells in the formula. Of course, you could type the numbers directly in the formula, but this is not a very efficient approach because you would have to adjust the formula for each month.
The screenshot below demonstrates the DATE function in action. I used the formula =DATE($B$2,$B$1,B$4) which is copied across row 5.
Tip. If you want to display only the days of the week like you see in the image above, select the cells with the formula (row 5 in our case), right-click and choose Format Cells…> Number > Custom. From the drop-down list under Type, select either dddd or ddd to show full day names or abbreviated names, respectively.
Your Excel calendar is almost done, and you only need to change the color of weekends. Naturally, you are not going to color the cells manually. We'll have Excel format the weekends automatically by creating a conditional formatting rule based on the WEEKDAY formula.
- You start by selecting your Excel calendar where you want to shade the weekends. In our case, it is the range $B$4:$AE$10. Be sure to start the selection with the 1st date column - Colum B in this example.
- On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting menu > New Rule.
- Create a new conditional formatting rule based on a formula as explained in the above linked guide.
- In the "Format values where this formula is true" box, enter the following WEEKDAY formula that will determine which cells are Saturdays and Sundays:
=WEEKDAY(B$5,2)>5 - Click the Format… button and set up your custom format by switching between the Font, Border and Fill tabs and playing with different formatting options. When done, click the OK button to preview the rule.
Now, let me briefly explain the WEEKDAY(serial_number,[return_type]) formula so that you can quickly adjust it for your own spreadsheets.
- The
serial_numberparameter represents the date you are trying to find. You enter a reference to your first cell with a date, B$5 in our case. - The
[return_type]parameter determines the week type (square brackets imply it is optional). You enter 2 as the return type for a week starting from Monday (1) through Sunday (7). You can find the full list of available return types here. - Finally, you write >5 to highlight only Saturdays (6) and Sundays (7).
The screenshot below demonstrates the result in Excel 2013 - the weekends are highlighted in the reddish colour.
Tips:
- If you have non-standard weekends in your company, e.g. Fridays and Saturdays, then you would need to tweak the formula so that it starts counting from Sunday (1) and highlight days 6 (Friday) and 7 (Saturday) -
WEEKDAY(B$5,1)>5. - If you are creating a horizontal (landscape) calendar, use a relative column (without $) and absolute row (with $) in a cell reference because you should lock the reference of the row - in the above example it is row 5, so we entered B$5. But if you are designing a calendar in vertical orientation, you should do the opposite, i.e. use an absolute column and relative row, e.g. $B5 as you can see in the screenshot below:
How to highlight holidays in Excel
To improve your Excel calendar further, you can shade public holidays as well. To do that, you will need to list the holidays you want to highlight in the same or some other spreadsheet.
For example, I've added the following holidays in column A ($A$14:$A$17). Of course, not all of them are real public holidays, but they will do for demonstration purposes : )
Again, you open Conditional Formatting > New Rule. In the case of holidays, you are going to use either MATCH or COUNTIF function:
=COUNTIF($A$14:$A$17,B$5)>0=MATCH(B$5,$A$14:$A$17,0)
Note. If you have chosen a different color for holidays, you need to move the public holiday rule to the top of the rules list via Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules…
The following image shows the result in Excel 2013:
Conditionally format a cell when a value is changed to a date
It's not a big problem to conditionally format a cell when a date is added to that cell or any other cell in the same row as long as no other value type is allowed. In this case, you could simply use a formula to highlight non-blanks, as described in Excel conditional formulas for blanks and non-blanks. But what if those cells already have some values, e.g. text, and you want to change the background color when text is changed to a date?
The task may sound a bit intricate, but the solution is very simple.
- First off, you need to determine the format code of your date. Here are just a few examples:
- D1: dd-mmm-yy or d-mmm-yy
- D2: dd-mmm or d-mmm
- D3: mmm-yy
- D4: mm/dd/yy or m/d/yy or m/d/yy h:mm
You can find the complete list of date codes in this article.
- Select a column where you want to change the color of cells or the entire table in case you want to highlight rows.
- And now create a conditional formatting rule using a formula similar to this one:
=CELL("format",$A2)="D1". In the formula, A is the column with dates and D1 is the date format.If your table contains dates in 2 or more formats, then use the OR operator, e.g.
=OR(cell("format", $A2)="D1", cell("format",$A2)="D2", cell("format", $A2)="D3")The screenshot below demonstrates the result of such conditional formatting rule for dates.
How to highlight rows based on a certain date in a certain column
Suppose, you have a large Excel spreadsheet that contains two date columns (B and C). You want to highlight every row that has a certain date, say 13-May-14, in column C.
To apply Excel conditional formatting to a certain date, you need to find its numerical value first. As you probably know, Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers, starting from January 1, 1900. So, 1-Jan-1900 is stored as 1, 2-Jan-1900 is stored as 2… and 13-May-14 as 41772.
To find the date's number, right-click the cell, select Format Cells > Number and choose the General format. Write down the number you see and click Cancel because you do not really want to change the date's format.
That was actually the major part of the work and now you only need to create a conditional formatting rule for the entire table with this very simple formula: =$C2=41772. The formula implies that your table has headers and row 2 is your first row with data.
An alternative way is to use the DATEVALUE formula that converts the date to the number format is which it is stored, e.g. =$C2=DATEVALUE("5/13/2014")
Whichever formula you use, it will have the same effect:
Conditionally format dates in Excel based on the current date
As you probably know Microsoft Excel provides the TODAY() functions for various calculations based on the current date. Here are just a few examples of how you can use it to conditionally format dates in Excel.
Example 1. Highlight dates equal to, greater than or less than today
To conditionally format cells or entire rows based on today's date, you use the TODAY function as follows:
Equal to today: =$B2=TODAY()
Greater than today: =$B2>TODAY()
Less than today: =$B2<TODAY()
The screenshot below demonstrates the above rules in action. Please note, at the moment of writing TODAY was 12-Jun-2014.
Example 2. Conditionally format dates in Excel based on several conditions
In a similar fashion, you can use the TODAY function in combination with other Excel functions to handle more complex scenarios. For example, you may want your Excel conditional formatting date formula to color the Invoice column when the Delivery Date is equal to or greater than today BUT you want the formatting to disappear when you enter the invoice number.
For this task, you would need an additional column with the following formula (where E is your Delivery column and F the Invoice column):
=IF(E2>=TODAY(),IF(F2="", 1, 0), 0)
If the delivery date is greater than or equal to the current date and there is no number in the Invoice column, the formula returns 1, otherwise it's 0.
After that you create a simple conditional formatting rule for the Invoice column with the formula =$G2=1 where G is your additional column. Of course, you will be able to hide this column later.
Example 3. Highlight upcoming dates and delays
Suppose you have a project schedule in Excel that lists tasks, their start dates and durations. What you want is to have the end date for each task calculated automatically. An additional challenge is that the formula should also consider the weekends. For example, if the starting date is 13-Jun-2014 and the number of days of work (Duration) is 2, the ending date should come as 17-Jun-2014, because 14-Jun and 15-Jun are Saturday and Sunday.
To do this, we will use the WORKDAY.INTL(start_date,days,[weekend],[holidays]) function, more precisely =WORKDAY.INTL(B2,C2,1).
In the formula, we enter 1 as the 3rd parameter since it indicates Saturday and Sunday as holidays. You can use another value if your weekends are different, say, Fri and Sat. The full list of the weekend values is available here. Optionally, you can also use the 4th parameter [holidays], which is a set of dates (range of cells) that should be excluded from the working day calendar.
And finally, you may want to highlight rows depending on how far away the deadline is. For example, the conditional formatting rules based on the following 2 formulas highlight upcoming and recent end dates, respectively:
=AND($D2-TODAY()>=0,$D2-TODAY()<=7)- highlight all rows where the End Date (column D) is within the next 7 days. This formula is really handy when it comes to tracking upcoming expiration dates or payments.=AND(TODAY()-$D2>=0,TODAY()-$D2<=7)- highlight all rows where the End Date (column D) is within the last 7 days. You can use this formula to track the latest overdue payments and other delays.
Here are a few more formula examples that can be applied to the table above:
=$D2<TODAY() - highlights all passed dates (i.e. dates less than the current date). Can be used to format expired subscriptions, overdue payments etc.
=$D2>TODAY() - highlights all future dates (i.e. dates greater than the current date). You can use it to highlight upcoming events.
Of course, there can be infinite variations of the above formulas, depending on your particular task. For instance:
=$D2-TODAY()>=6 - highlights dates that occur in 6 or more days.
=$D2=TODAY()-14 - highlights dates occurring exactly 2 weeks ago.
How to highlight dates within a date range
If you have a long list of dates in your worksheet, you may also want to highlight the cells or rows that fall within a certain date range, i.e. highlight all dates that are between two given dates.
You can fulfil this task using the TODAY() function again. You will just have to construct a little bit more elaborate formulas as demonstrated in the examples below.
Formulas to highlight past dates
- More than 30 days ago:
=TODAY()-$A2>30 - From 30 to 15 days ago, inclusive:
=AND(TODAY()-$A2>=15, TODAY()-$A2<=30) - Less than 15 days ago:
=AND(TODAY()-$A2>=1, TODAY()-$A2<15)
The current date and any future dates are not colored.
Formulas to highlight future dates
- Will occur in more than 30 days from now:
=$A2-TODAY()>30 - In 30 to 15 days, inclusive:
=AND($A2-TODAY()>=15, $A2-TODAY()<=30) - In less than 15 days:
=AND($A2-TODAY()>=1, $A2-TODAY()<15)
The current date and any past dates are not colored.
How to shade gaps and time intervals
In this last example, we are going to utilize yet another Excel date function - DATEDIF(start_date, end_date, interval). This function calculates the difference between two dates based on the specified interval. It differs from all other functions we've discussed in this tutorial in the way that it lets you ignore months or years and calculate the difference only between days or months, whichever you choose.
Don't see how this could work for you? Think about it in another way… Suppose you have a list of birthdays of your family members and friends. Would you like to know how many days there are until their next birthday? Moreover, how many days exactly are left until your wedding anniversary and other events you wouldn't want to miss? Easily!
The formula you need is this (where A is your Date column):
=DATEDIF(TODAY(), DATE((YEAR(TODAY())+1), MONTH($A2), DAY($A2)), "yd")
The "yd" interval type at the end of the formula is used to ignore years and calculate the difference between the days only. For the full list of available interval types, look here.
Tip. If you happen to forget or misplace that complex formula, you can use this simple one instead: =365-DATEDIF($A2,TODAY(),"yd"). It produces exactly the same results, just remember to replace 365 with 366 in leap years : )
And now let's create an Excel conditional formatting rule to shade different gaps in different colors. In this case, it makes more sense to utilize Excel Color Scales rather than create a separate rule for each period.
The screenshot below demonstrates the result in Excel - a gradient 3-color scale with tints from green to red through yellow.
"Days Until Next Birthday" Excel Web App
We have created this Excel Web App to show you the above formula in action. Just enter your events in 1st column and change the corresponding dates in the 2nd column to experiment with the result.
If you are curious to know how to create such interactive Excel spreadsheets, check out this article on how to make web-based Excel spreadsheets.
Hopefully, at least one of the Excel conditional formats for dates discussed in this article has proven useful to you. If you are looking for a solution to some different task, you are most welcome to post a comment. Thank you for reading!
1237 comments
I am attempting to format blank cells so that when a date is entered into column D, column E will populate with the expiry date. I'm confident that my formula is correct but once it is applied those cells with no date in column D are being populated with a date in column E. See below for clarification
Formula in active cell E4: =DATE(YEAR(D4)+1,MONTH(D4),DAY(D4))
Rank Trained Expires
8/15/2016 8/15/2017
9/30/2016 9/30/2017
9/10/2016 9/10/2017
11/14/2016 11/14/2017
11/16/2016 11/16/2017
8/31/2016 8/31/2017
8/31/2016 8/31/2017
8/2/2016 8/2/2017
9/2/2016 9/2/2017
8/29/2017 8/29/2018
12/31/1900
12/31/1900
12/31/1900
12/31/1900
12/31/1900
Hi
I have a list of various deadline dates. I would like to add a column for "activity start date" which would be fixed at 2 weeks prior to the deadline date - so the formula would be the same but the actual dates will all be different
Is there such a formula as "activity start date" = "deadline date" - 2 weeks
deadline start
31.6.2017 needs formula to calculate and input "17.6.2017"
Thanks
Paul
Hi Paul,
Please see how to add and subtract weeks from a date in this article.
Hope you'll find it helpful.
I have a spreadsheet where I have a sent date and to be completed date. If the Sent date is between 7-13 days before the to be completed date it needs to be yellow and no color if it's 1-6 days before the to be completed date. If the Sent date is more than 14 days after the date to be completed date it should turn red. Now if the project was completed in the time frame and there is a Y in the completed column the cell needs to go back to join color. Someone please help me!!!
Hello, Heather,
since you have 4 conditions, you will need to create 4 rules for conditional formatting using AND function. Also you need to know how to subtract dates in Excel.
So, if your Sent date is in A2 and To be completed date is in B2, your first rule will be like this:
=AND((B2-A2)>=7,(B2-A2)<=13)
Choose the filling, make sure to apply it to =$A:$B, and check the Stop if true box.
Please use this example and the links above to learn more about all this functions and create the rest of the rules.
Hope this helps!
Hi,
Id like to know what formula to use to between two different columns using dates where column A would have 16/06/2017 and column B would have 17/06/2017 so I can tell if the date in column b is greater and have it highlit red in formatting please which i can do using =$A$1<$B$1 and formatting it red, what i am struggling with is applying it across the entire two columns for all dates as it wants to keep using cell A1 only
Hi, Jake,
if I understand your task correctly, the rule you're using - =$A$1<$B$1 - is correct, but you need to make sure that it applies to =$A:$B. Then both of you columns will be filled with red if the date in column B is greater than the date in column A.
Dear Svetlana, thank you for your help on creating a calendar, highlighting wekends and holidays....
I have a big table with a row for each of 2000 employes, and a calendar from 2013. till today in the same table. In another table I have for that period seek days for all employes. Each employee has a unique code. And in the second table one employee has multiple rows with 2 dates.
I need to highlight for each employee the days when he was not working in the first table with the calendar based on the date ranges in the second table.
I have tried conditional formating, but without any success :(
Thank you for your help.
I want to be able to set up multiple cells across 5 columns to show up different colours. 1 after the date is 7 days old, 1 after the date is 14 days old and one after the date is 21 days old.
Hi Svetlana Cheusheva,
How to highlight a cell by entering different dates.
For Example: i want to highlight dates from 1 to 5 GREEN, from 6 to 10 BLUE and from 11 to 15 RED.
Thanks.
Hi Mudassir,
I assume you want to highlight dates depending on the day of the month. If so, set up 3 different rules for your range of dates with the following formulas, and choose a different color for each rule:
1 to 5 GREEN: =AND(DAY(A1)>0,DAY(A1)<=5)
6 to 10 BLUE: =AND(DAY(A1)>5,DAY(A1)<=10)
11 to 15 RED: =AND(DAY(A1)>10,DAY(A1)<=15)
I am trying to get a cell to highlight "good" in green if a date is met and "rescrub" in red if the date goes beyond the required date. For instance, reports are due by the 20th of each month. How can I insert the above parameters if the date is met or not met?
I also would like to know..
I have a question about my spreadsheet that contains orders. I have a column for order dates, one for wedding dates and then one for estimated shipping dates. How do i get excel to automatically flag an order if the wedding date is after the shipping date?
any help to create the condition would be greatly appreciated!
cat
Hi,
I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction, please?
I have a spreadsheet and I'm trying to set up conditional formatting rules, 1 that will highlight any orders with an order date older than 1 week (Column E) where there is no Estimated Delivery Date (Column L) and another to highlight any order older than 2 weeks (Column E) where there is no Promised Delivery Date (Column N).
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
Parry
Hi !
It would be really great if anyone can help me figure out
how to color a cell if (For example)
Color cell A1 if any of cell in B1, C1, D1 contains the date after 5/20/2017. If there is no date, leave it blank.
Thank you so much !
I have dates in Column A (15 FEb 2017) and Column B (31 Jan 2017). I need to color code column B when the date in Column B has gone 5, 10, 15days pass the date in column A and when the date in Column B is 5, 10,15 days within the date in Column A.
Thanks in advance.
Start Date Due Date
4/24/2017 5/24/2017
4/24/2017 5/24/2017
4/17/2017 5/17/2017
4/10/2017 5/10/2017
1/20/2018 2/20/2018
I want to highlight the dates in Due Date column, 7 days prior to current date and then change the highlighting from 1st day of next month. How can I do this?
Hi friends,
If am using the some tracker in excel for one year in that i need to differentiate the weeks in the month. for example - jan month 1st week yellow color, 2nd week green color, 3rd week pink color,etc the same will be followed for subsequent months by using conditional formatting option.
Kindly help on this.
Thanks in advance!
hello,
i want to know that if i want to highlight due dates in the column such that the due dates are remain highlighted even after the next month.
Hello. I would like to ask some assistance regarding this matter. I have two columns - the first column contains the date until the certificate is valid & the second column named as STATUS. I would like to turn the "STATUS" column to have values such as "UP-TO-DATE" or "EXPIRED" this is in reference to the date(s) of the first column against the present date.
Example
VALIDITY OF CERTIFICATE STATUS
January 01, 2015
let's say the date today is April 25, 2017. Looking at this, the certificate is already expired. How am I going to format it so that the STATUS column shows UP-TO-DATE / EXPIRED?
Thank you for your assistance.
I have a spreadsheet of clients who we ring every 3 months. I have a column with the date of the last call - I'm attempting to format cells where the date is over 3 months ago so we know who needs a call. I'm using the formula - =$C2-TODAY()>90 but the results I'm getting are not what I'd expect e.g. today's date is 14/4/17 but it's highlighted a cell 23/3/2017. Some of the cells don't have dates in them but text such as not active - is this causing my troubles or have I made a mess of the formula
Hi
I have a date received column (Column A) and column titled notice of complaint issued (Column B). I want the notice of complaint issued cell to highlight red if the date entered is more than than 28 working days after the date received.
Struggling to get anywhere near working that one out, so any assistance hugely appreciated.
Thanks
Rob
Hi, Robert,
first of all, you need a formula which will count the number of working days between your dates – that would be Excel NETWORKDAYS function (you can read more about it here). The next step is to use this function when creating a formatting rule for your cells:
=NETWORKDAYS($A2, $B2)>28
Follow the steps from the article to create a formatting rule using the formula above. Hope it helps!
Hello,
I have not really found an answer to my problem and I hope you can help me.
I am comparing 2 days and 14 days difference
Column B (arrival date): 30/08/2017
Column A( expected delivery date): 15/08/2017
If Column A has less than 14 days after the arrival date (Column B) to be highlighted in red, also if the date is even before the arrival Date (Column B) also to be highlighted in red.
Many thanks in advance
Hello, Dilyana,
for your first condition, you need to create a formatting rule with a following formula:
=($B1-$A1)<14
As for the 2nd one, please, explain in more details the condition you wish the dates to meet.
Hi,
In my spread sheet I want to highlight an entire row based on the year, i.e. rows with 2016 to be blue, 2017 to be green. The cell will contain a full date - 2016-11-30 - but I don't care about the month or day. The only information I have found seems to be on months and days. Can you help me?
Hi, Elizabeth,
there are other ways you can play with.
One of them, is to create a new formatting rule, where you choose Format only cells that contain – specific text - containing – end enter 2016. And make these cells to be filled with blue. Same goes for 2017 – a new rule with a corresponding text value and colour in the rule.
Another way is to use YEAR function. Let's say you enter dates into A column, and there's 2016-11-30 in A1. You create a new formatting rule with a next function:
=(YEAR($A1))=2016
But the same should be done for dates that contain 2017.
Hope it'll help!