Dateserial function

Returns a Variant (Date) for a specified year, month, and day.

Syntax

DateSerial ( year, month, day )

Warning    Make sure the arguments are in the correct range of values. An invalid argument can result in an incorrect result.

The DateSerial function syntax has these arguments:

Argument	Description
year	Required. Integer. Number between 100 and 9999, inclusive, or a numeric expression.
month	Required. Integer. Any numeric expression.
day	Required. Integer. Any numeric expression.

Remarks

To specify a date, such as December 31, 1991, the range of numbers for each DateSerialargument should be in the accepted range for the unit; that is, 1–31 for days and 1–12 for months. However, you can also specify relative dates for each argument using any numeric expression that represents some number of days, months, or years before or after a certain date.

The following example uses numeric expressions instead of absolute date numbers. Here the DateSerial function returns a date that is the day before the first day (1 - 1), two months before August (8 - 2), 10 years before 1990 (1990 - 10); in other words, May 31, 1980.

DateSerial(1990 - 10, 8 - 2, 1 - 1)

Two-digit years for the year argument are interpreted based on user-defined machine settings. The default settings are that values between 0 and 29, inclusive, are interpreted as the years 2000–2029. The default values between 30 and 99 are interpreted as the years 1930–1999. For all other year arguments, use a four-digit year (for example, 1800).

Windows versions earlier than Windows 2000 interpret two-digit years based on the defaults described above. To be sure the function returns the proper value, use a four-digit year.

When any argument exceeds the accepted range for that argument, it increments to the next larger unit as appropriate. For example, if you specify 35 days, it is evaluated as one month and some number of days, depending on where in the year it is applied. If any single argument is outside the range -32,768 to 32,767, an error occurs. If the date specified by the three arguments falls outside the acceptable range of dates, an error occurs.

Note: For year, month, and day, if the Calendar property setting is Gregorian, the supplied value is assumed to be Gregorian. If the Calendar property setting is Hijri, the supplied value is assumed to be Hijri.

The returned date part is in the time period units of the current Visual Basic calendar. For example, if the current calendar is Hijri and the date part to be returned is the year, the year value is a Hijri year. For the argument year, values between 0 and 99, inclusive, are interpreted as the years 1400-1499. For all other year values, use the complete four-digit year (for example, 1520).

Query example

Expression	Results
SELECT Dateserial(2018,12,13) AS NewDate FROM ProductSales;	Returns the "date" for the specified year, month and day entered in the arguments of the function and displays in the column "NewDate". Result: "13/12/2018".

VBA example

Note: Examples that follow demonstrate the use of this function in a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) module. For more information about working with VBA, select Developer Reference in the drop-down list next to Search and enter one or more terms in the search box.

This example uses the DateSerial function to return the date for the specified year, month, and day.

Dim MyDate ' MyDate contains the date for February 12, 1969. MyDate = DateSerial(1969, 2, 12) ' Return a date.

Choose the right date function