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
Good afternoon,
I have a checklist spreadsheet that i am working on and need some assistance with conditional formatting. I have one column which has dates in it. I want to use an icon set for the following:
When the date is today or any future date I want the green icon.
When the date is within 14 days of today's date I want the icon to be orange - this needs to change and each day passes (a date 3 weeks from today would be green but as soon as it reaches the 14 days to go mark, I want it to turn to orange.
Any date that is before today's date would be red.
I can get the red and green to work but not the orange. Please help.
Thanks
Marc
Hi Marc,
The green and red icons are easy, please see the settings below. As for the orange one, sorry I cannot figure out a proper formula because relative cell references are not allowed for icon sets.
Hi, im stuck, just learning excel. How do you create a formula that shows how many days left til the end of the month. Am assuming I use a NOW function, just not sure how to do it.
Thankyou in advance. =)
Hi Karen,
You can use either formula:
=EOMONTH(TODAY(), 0)-TODAY()
or
=DATEDIF(TODAY(), EOMONTH(TODAY(), 0), "d")
To display the number of days, a cell with the formula should be in the General format.
You can find more about calculating dates in Excel in our Excel Date tutorial. For example, the following article explains the details of the EOMONTH function that returns the last day of the month:
https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/excel-month-eomonth-functions/#get-month-last-day
Hi
How to highlight all dates rows above a specific date.
e.g all rows above 1 January, 2019.
thanks
Hello Svetlana,
Can you please advise on my last question to you in post 116? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And I can explain further if needs be.
Thanks in advance,
Leon
Hi Leon,
I am sorry I have very little experience with Google sheets. In Microsoft Excel, you could probably do this by using the VLOOKUP function (https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/excel-vlookup-tutorial/)
Though, I cannot state anything with confidence without seeing your data structure. If you could post this question on our forum and attach a sample Excel workbook for better understanding, our support team will do their best to help.
HI,
How can we highlight the data upto current month in conditional formats ..
Thank you in advance.
Hi Sai,
Assuming that your dates are in column A and row 2 is the first row with data, you can create a rule with the following formula:
=$A2<DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),MONTH(TODAY()),1)
Hello Svetlana,
Really hope you can help me.
I manage a spreadsheet (on Google Sheets), that lists booked on adverts that have specific copy deadlines for each ad. Each ad copy deadline is dependant on the section of the paper in which it appears. So, for example, for an ad appearing in Sport/Main News section deadline is always the day before. For an ad appearing in Weekend magazine, copy deadline is 10 days before, Review section, 4 days before and so on.I have separate columns for Section name, Publication Date, Copy deadline.
Is there a method or formula I could use that could automatically tell me the copy deadline of the ad, based on the section in which it appears and publication date? So if I enter the section name, and the publication date, the copy deadline will appear with the correct deadline date.
Thanks in advance.
i have a spreadsheet which i import data from a .csv file daily and run a report to show missed telephone calls. I want to highlight those times when the office is open but can't seem to get conditional formating to just look at the times. The format the date/time info is in is 15/05/2015 12:33, i just want to highlight the time if between certain times and not the date as this changes daily with each import. can onlt get the formatting if i include the date and time. Any suggestons? Thanks
Hello Mark,
Please select the Timestamp column and create a rule using this formula:
=AND( TIMEVALUE("10:10")<=(D2-INT(D2)),(D2-INT(D2))<=TIMEVALUE("17:00"))
Where D2 is the first cell in your selection
"10:10" – "17:00" is the time range that you want to highlight.
I am looking for a function that will tell me when my invoice dated 1/1/2015
is over 30, 60 or 90 days..
Hi Becky,
Assuming that your invoice date is in cell A2, you can use the following formulas:
Over 30 days: =TODAY()-$A2>30
Over 60 days: =TODAY()-$A2>60
Over 90 days: =TODAY()-$A2>90
Hi Svetlana Cheusheva ,
Could you pleas tell me how to highlight a cell (Say A1) if the cell value (Say B1) is of the last month date.
Thanks in advance.
Hi Abhishek,
Here's the formula:
=MONTH($B1)=MONTH(TODAY())-1
I have an excel sheet where I am highlighting completion dates with respect to current date. The formula am using is =AND($P6-TODAY()>=0,$P6-TODAY()<=7). Here P6 stores the cut-off date. However am also trying to match it with another criteria in column L6 which stores whether the job has been completed or is in-progress. All am looking to do here is if job completionYes and the completion date<=7 days from current date then such completion dates should be marked in RED.Pls help, thank you
I have tryed some of the above examples with no luck. I have a spread sheet with names in colum A and dates in colum C if the dates are more than 3 months old I want to highlight the names orange, and if the dates are 6 months or greater I want the names to be red. any help?
Thanks
Hi Chris,
Select the cells in column A you want to highlight (not including the column headers) and create the following rules:
Orange: =AND(TODAY()-$C2>90, TODAY()-$C2<180)
Red: =TODAY()-$C2>=180
Assuming that row 2 is your first row with data.
Please note, the formula operate on days, not months, because the number of days differ from month to month.
Hi Svetlana
Please can you help me, I make use of a spread sheet to monitor and track all certificates expiry’s for all of my employees, I would like the cells to automatically change colour if the date has expired + going to expire in 0-30 days, 0-60 days, 0-90 days.
Thanks so much.
Hi Etienne,
Assuming that your dates are in column A, you can use the following formulas:
Expired:=$A2<TODAY()
Expire in 0-30 days: =AND($A2-TODAY()>=0, $A2-TODAY()<=30)
Expire in 31-60 days: =AND($A2-TODAY()>30, $A2-TODAY()<=60)
Expire in 61-90 days: =AND($A2-TODAY()>60, $A2-TODAY()<=90)
we can calculate the no of day like =datedif(c11,d1"d")
now how we can calculated the number of months between 31/10/2012 to 31/03/2015
I have a large file that is used to track leased property. Out Leases run for 10 years with 2 10 year extensions. How can I highlight an entire row in red when the lease inception date is coming up on renewal? That is: inception date 1996, renewal is 2016. I don't need exact dates, years will work fine.
I have looked thru your article, but didn't see how to handle a ten year gap.
Thank you for your article and help.
Joe
I need a rule for column C that highlights the cell if the date is 6 months or more in the past.
Hi Dan,
In this case, you can operate on days, not months, because months have a different number on days.
For example the following formula highlights dates that are 180 days or more in the past:
=TODAY()-$C2>180
Hi,
I have an excel spreadsheet (2010) that I would like the date entered in a set cell to turn yellow within that cell three months before it's anniversary. Then to turn red on it's anniversary date.
Any help much apprecaited.
Thanks
Hi,
I need to check the Datetimestamp in an cell and condition format it with different color.
Eg:
Cell content will be in the below format ("22-MAR-15 23:15") ("DD-MON-RR hh:mm") format
Scenario:
o Green when process is complete by 3:00 CST/4:00 EST
o Yellow when process is complete after 3:00 CST/4:00 EST and before 4:00 CST/5:00 EST
o Red when process is complete after 4:00 CST/5:00 EST
Applies to the current date.
Can someone please help me on this.
Thanks
Hi Svetlana! Posted a comment previously, here are some changes to the question.
Here are some details of the matrix:
F1: Data Received Date
G1: Duration (Days excluding weekends)
H1:End Date (Days excluding weekends)
I1: Data Reviewed Date
G2: 3
H2: 4
What needs to be done is that: The date on F ( Data received) has to be added to the end date to calculate the deadline.
If the deadline is met and completed, the cells at I(Data Reveiwed Date) should turn green.
However, if the deadline is not met but it is still completed, it should turn yellow.
I am unable to get the appropriate formulas. Do help, thank you so much.
Hello, I have a .CSV file, which opens in Excel. In the spread sheet, column A is Subject and Column B is the Date. I want to use different colours in Column A (Subject), based on the value in column B (Date). What should be the formula. Thanks for understanding and cooperation.
Hi Svetlana,
I am creating a to do list to coordinate with the various items I have to complete by certain dates but I don't have the knowlege to make up the formula to return what I need.
For instance;
I will get a date or confirmation for a document to be filed and place that Date in A2.
What I need to be able to do is have some cells return a value of 'due within the 15 days prior' and some cells to return a value of 'due within the 15 days after'
I have a spread sheet with employee names and available certifications. The cells are marked with a check if the employee has the certificate. some certificates have expiration dates. I need a formula, for conditionally formatting the individual cells, that changes the color of the check mark when the certificate has expired.