BeginnerDate & Time
Assemble a delivery date with DATE
Turn separate year, month and day columns into a real date Excel understands.
DATE
5 min15 points
DATE
Builds a date from separate year, month and day values.
Syntax
DATE(year, month, day)
Date & Time.
Practise DATE1 interactive exercise, free, no account needed
A worked example
=DATE(2026,8,15)
Returns Aug 15, 2026
Builds a date from year, month and day values.
Where it goes wrong
It normalises overflow rather than erroring: DATE(2026,13,1) is January 2027, which is useful deliberately and confusing accidentally.
What the exercises catch
Each of these is a wrong turn the practice exercises recognise and name. They are the misconceptions, not the answers.
- That is text shaped like a date, not a date. It will not sort correctly and you cannot subtract it from another date. Build it from the three columns instead.Assemble a delivery date with DATE
- Joining the numbers gives you the text 20261015, which Excel cannot do date arithmetic on. DATE turns the three parts into a value the calendar understands.Assemble a delivery date with DATE
Practise DATE
Knowing what a function does and being able to write it from memory are different skills. These close the gap.