Building Dates With DATE and EDATE

In the last lesson you took dates apart. Now you will build them up. Sometimes you have a year, a month, and a day as separate numbers and need to combine them into one real date.

The DATE function does exactly that. And when you need to move a date forward or backward by whole months, EDATE handles the tricky month-length math for you.

These are the go-to tools for scheduling, due dates, and building dates from imported pieces.

The DATE function takes three arguments in a fixed order: year, month, day.

So =DATE(2026, 6, 18) produces a real date value for June 18, 2026. The spreadsheet then displays it using your date format.

This matters when data arrives in pieces. If a year sits in A2, a month in B2, and a day in C2, you can assemble them into one date.