How to count number of months between two dates in Excel

The best way to understand how DATEDIF works is to first understand the structure of the function and the parameters it requires.

Structure of DATEDIF

The standard syntax of countif function in excel is shown below;

=DATEDIF(start_date, end_date, unit)

• start_date

Could be any date earlier than the second parameter end date. Otherwise errors will occur.

• end_date

Could be any date earlier than the second parameter end date. Otherwise errors will occur.

• unit

Could be any one from “d” for days, “m” for months and “y” for years.

Implementing the Formula on an Actual Data Set

Let’s take an example data set and find out the number of days between some actual dates. So let’s consider the data set shown below;

We can see in the example data set that there are some start dates that are earlier than the end dates. 

Let’s see how we can use Excel’s built-in formula to find a solution to our problem by following these steps;