Mac Forum / Applications / Excel / July 2005

You'll have to subtract each component separately. For example,
=year(desired date)-year(birth date). Then do the same for month and day.
Then you'll have to reduce the year by 1 if the birth month and day is
"after" the desired date.

On 7/28/05 4:08 AM, in article
Xns96A18AD383644jimmyjosephinboschco@client.loc.cc.bosch.com, "Jimmy Joseph"
<jimmy.joseph@in.bosch.com> wrote:

In article
<Xns96A18AD383644jimmyjosephinboschco@client.loc.cc.bosch.com>,

Another way you could do this is with DateDif (see

   http://cpearson.com/excel/datedif.htm

for documentation). For instance, say the birth date is in A1 and the
date of interest is in B1:

   =DATEDIF(A1,B1,"y") & "/" & DATEDIF(A1,B1,"m") & "/" &
DATEDIF(A1,B1,"md")

However, note that "month" is a tricky concept. For instance how many
months and days is it between 31.1.2005 and 2.3.2005 (30 days)?

The formula above will say  0/1/-1. Since the first date is in January
and January has 31 days, it calculates 1 thirty-one-day month (3.3.2005)
with -1 day.

There are other results that make sense, but nothing can be made
consistent since the concept of month is so variable. For instance, if
you say one month after 31.1.2005 is 28.2.2005, what should be the
result for one month after 29.1.2005?

Any algorithm you devise will have to deal with this type of anomaly.

OTOH, you could use years and days:

   =DATEDIF(A1,B1,"y") & "/" & DATEDIF(A1,B1,"yd")

which is perfectly self-consistent for all but leap days (using days
alone would be absolutely consistent).