FormulaDates
Calculate years and months of tenure between two dates
Turn a start date and today's date into a readable "3 years, 7 months" tenure figure with one DATEDIF formula, no manual date math.
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Your formula
=DATEDIF(B2, TODAY(), "y") & " years, " & DATEDIF(B2, TODAY(), "ym") & " months"
Works in both Excel and Google Sheets unless the fine print below says otherwise.
Why it's built this way
- →The "y" unit returns the number of complete years between the two dates, ignoring any leftover months — the whole-years part of the answer.
- →The "ym" unit returns the leftover months AFTER those complete years are subtracted out, so the two DATEDIF calls together add up to the exact tenure instead of double-counting a partial year.
- →Concatenating the two results with & and literal text turns a pair of numbers into one readable sentence, which a raw date subtraction never gives on its own.
The fine print
- →DATEDIF has no entry in Excel's function autocomplete or Insert Function dialog — Microsoft never documented it in the UI — but it has been stable across Excel versions for decades and behaves the same in Google Sheets.
- →Avoid the "md" unit (leftover days): it has a long-standing, Microsoft-acknowledged bug that returns wrong results across certain month boundaries. "y", "ym" and "yd" are the reliable units.
- →If end_date falls before start_date, DATEDIF returns #NUM! instead of a negative tenure.