You aren't doing anything wrong... that is just Excel trying to be helpful
(it saw you working with dates, so it gave you its answer as a date)... just
Format the cell to General and it will report 17 as the result.

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"marie" wrote in message
...
I am using a datedif formula to calculate an employee's number of years
worked. I have the hire date and current(sheet) date. I have used the
formula
=datedif(cellwithcurrentdate,cellwithhiredate,"y") . The return is
1/17/1900. What am I doing wrong?