How To Determine If Date Has Passed In Excel ?


Dates are very important for organising and analysing data in Microsoft Excel. It's critical to be able to tell whether a given date has gone or not while managing project deadlines, keeping tabs on significant events, or keeping track of time−sensitive chores. This procedure can be automated, which can help you save a lot of time and work.

In this article, we'll walk you through how to use Excel to check whether a date has passed. We'll look at various methods and features that let you quickly compare dates and make defensible choices in light of the results. You will have a firm grasp on how to quickly determine whether a date has already passed in your Excel spreadsheets by the end of this session.

Determine If Date Has Passed

Here we will first use a formula to get the first value, then use the autofill handle to complete the task. So let us see a simple process to determine if a date has passed in Excel.

Step 1

Consider an Excel sheet that contains a list of dates similar to the below image.

First, click on an empty cell, in our case, cell B2, and enter the formula as

=IF(ISBLANK(A2),"",IF(A2<TODAY(),"Overdue","Not due")) and click enter to get the first value. In this formula, A2 is the address of the date.

Empty cell > Formula > Enter.

Step 2

Then use the auto−fill handle to complete the task. The final output will be similar to the image below.

Note

There are two options− Overdue and Not due. The cell will be filled with Overdue if that date is past due when compared to the current date. It will, however, be filled with Not due.

When a blank cell is present in the selected range, the result will be blank, according to the formula's definition of ISBLANK.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have used a simple example to demonstrate how you can determine if a date has passed in Excel to highlight a particular set of data.

Updated on: 10-Jul-2023

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