Have a look at Chip Pearson's site he

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datedif.aspx

where he describes the use of the DATEDIF function.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Aug 27, 12:37*am, srinivasan
wrote:
I have to deduct between two dates. From 31-10-2008, I have to deduct
1-11-1969. It may be seen that the difference is 39 years. But in excel it
shows 39 years 12 months and 30 days when I use date(year,month, day)
formula. I want the result to be shown in three colums adjacent one for year,
another for month and the last for day. The result *should show 39 years,0
month and 0 day. What formula I must use to get this result in three column
cells.

Further I have to multiply the result years in to half years. When I
multiply by 2 two instead of 78 it shows calculation by year number i.e
29218. What formula to be used to show it as 78 half years in another cell to
be used for calculation.
Thanks for the help.