DURATION is a function in Excel that calculates the number of days, months, or years between two dates. To use the DURATION function, you need to enter the dates into the function in the following format: yyyy-mm-dd. The function will return the number of days, months, or years between the two dates.
The syntax of DURATION in Excel is as follows: =DURATION(start_date, end_date) The function takes two dates as input and calculates the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds between the two dates.
One way to use the DURATION function in Excel is to calculate the number of days, weeks, months, or years between two dates. For example, the following formula returns the number of days between the "Start Date" and "End Date" columns:
=DURATION(B2,C2)
This formula can be used to calculate the number of days between two dates in different cells, or to calculate the number of days until a future date.
There are a few occasions when you should not use the DURATION function in Excel. One situation is when you have a date range that includes a leap year. For example, if your date range is from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016, the DURATION function will return the incorrect result because it will include the 29 days in February 2016. Another time you should not use the DURATION function is when you have a date range that is more than 400 years long. This is because the DURATION function can only calculate up to 400 years.
There are a few similar formulae to DURATION in Excel. One is called "NPER" which is short for "number of periods". This formula calculates the number of periods for a given interest rate and payment frequency. Another formula is called "PPMT" which calculates the payment amount for a given period and interest rate. Lastly, there is the "IPMT" formula which calculates the interest payment for a given period and interest rate.