Date Representation

Going forward in time, the date component of a serial value increases by 1 each day.

There are two different bases for serial values:

  • In the 1900 date base system, the lower limit is January 1, 1900, which has serial value 1. The upper-limit is December 31, 9999, which has serial value 2,958,465.

  • In the 1904 date base system, the lower limit is January 1, 1904, which has serial value 0. The upper-limit is December 31, 9999, which has serial value 2,957,003.

As to which date base system an implementation uses by default or whether it allows its users to switch between date base systems, is unspecified.

For the 1900 date base system:DATEVALUE("01-Jan-1900") results in the serial value 1.0000000…DATEVALUE("03-Feb-1910") results in the serial value 3687.0000000…DATEVALUE("01-Feb-2006") results in the serial value 38749.0000000…DATEVALUE("31-Dec-9999") results in the serial value 2958465.0000000…

For the 1904 date base system:DATEVALUE("01-Jan-1904") results in the serial value 0.0000000…DATEVALUE("03-Feb-1910") results in the serial value 2225.0000000…DATEVALUE("01-Feb-2006") results in the serial value 37287.0000000…DATEVALUE("31-Dec-9999") results in the serial value 2957003.0000000…