calculating time

[Jason - MR]

I've got a couple projects that require me to figure out how long we have
owned an asset. I have acquisition & disposal dates but I can't figure out
the formula to convert these into any form of days or months or years. Any
suggestions? My date columns are in the format 08/28/99. Thanks. Jason.

[daddylonglegs]

You can simply subtract the acquisition date from the disposal date. If they're in A1 & B1 repectively

=B1-A1

format as general

[Jason - MR]

I've tried that, all I get is another date. For example where I subtract
12/31/05 -11/30/03, I get 12/31/02.

These dates are imported from another program and appear date formatted, but
the subtraction doesn't work.

Thanks. Jason.

"daddylonglegs" wrote:

>
> You can simply subtract the acquisition date from the disposal date. If
> they're in A1 & B1 repectively
>
> =B1-A1
>
> format as general
>
>
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> daddylonglegs
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[daddylonglegs]

It's all in the formatting.....

For the cell with your formula e.g. =B1-A1,use Format > Cells > Number > General and you should see a result of 762

Because you are subtracting dates excel assumes, wrongly, that you want the result in a date format - because excel's dates start at 1st January 1900 if you count 762 days from that date you get 31st January 1902 so your result showed as 01/31/02