MS Excel: YEAR function for extracting the year from a date

Dates are critical in managing data across industries—whether you're tracking financial performance, organizing historical records, or scheduling future events. Excel’s YEAR function plays a key role in date manipulation by extracting the year from a given date. It's simple but powerful when used in financial models, time-series analysis, and reports requiring year-based grouping or filtering.

Syntax

=YEAR(serial_number)

Arguments:

Argument	Required	Description
serial_number	✅ Yes	A valid Excel date from which you want to extract the year. This can be a cell reference, a date string, or a formula result that returns a date.

Examples

Example 1: Basic Usage

=YEAR(DATE(2025, 5, 2))

Result: 2025

Example 2: Extract Year from a Cell

Assume cell A2 contains 15/08/2023:

=YEAR(A2)

Result: 2023

Example 3: Use with TODAY()

=YEAR(TODAY())

Result: Returns the current year dynamically, e.g., 2025.

Example 4: Calculate Age Based on Birth Year

Assume cell B2 contains a birthdate (e.g., 1990-04-25):

=YEAR(TODAY()) - YEAR(B2)

Result: 35 (as of 2025)

Excel stores dates as serial numbers. For example:

• January 1, 1900 = 1

• May 2, 2025 = 45070

The YEAR function extracts the year portion from these serial values using Excel’s internal calendar system.

Sample Table

Date	Formula	Result
2023-06-01	=YEAR(A2)	2023
01/01/2000	=YEAR(A3)	2000
TODAY()	=YEAR(TODAY())	2025

Common Errors

Error	Cause
#VALUE!	Non-date text passed as argument
Incorrect Result	Date is stored as text and not properly converted

Fix Tip: Ensure dates are in valid date format, or wrap text dates with DATEVALUE:

=YEAR(DATEVALUE("01-Jan-2022"))

Related Functions

Function	Description
MONTH()	Returns the month (1–12) from a date
DAY()	Returns the day (1–31) from a date
TODAY()	Returns the current date
YEARFRAC()	Returns the fraction of a year between two dates

Summary Table

Feature	Details
Function Name	YEAR
Purpose	Extract year from a date
Returns	Integer (e.g., 2025)
Input Type	Date serial or date-formatted cell
Excel Version	Available in all versions
Common Uses	Age calculation, year filtering, reports by year

Conclusion

The YEAR function is a foundational date function in Excel, enabling year-based calculations, sorting, and filtering. Whether used in dashboards, formulas, or conditional logic, it's a handy tool for any Excel user working with time data.