A to Z of Excel Functions: The DAY Function

Welcome back to our regular A to Z of Excel Functions blog.  Today we look at the DAY function.

The DAY function

This function returns the day of a date, represented by a serial number.  The day is given as an integer ranging from 1 to 31.

The DAY function employs the following syntax to operate:

The DAY function has the following arguments:

• serial_number:  this is required. The date of the day you are trying to find.  Dates should be entered by using the DATE function, or as results of other formulas or functions.  For example, use DATE(2008,5,23) for the 23rd day of May, 2008.  Problems can occur if dates are entered as text.

It should be further noted that:

• Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers so they can be used in calculations.  By default, January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448 because it is 39,447 days after January 1, 1900
• Values returned by the YEAR, MONTH and DAY functions will be Gregorian values regardless of the display format for the supplied date value.  For example, if the display format of the supplied date is Hijri, the returned values for the YEAR, MONTH and DAY functions will be values associated with the equivalent Gregorian date.

Please see my example below:

We’ll continue our A to Z of Excel Functions soon. Keep checking back – there’s a new blog post every business day.

A full page of the function articles can be found here.