Dateadd function

Returns a Variant (Date) containing a date to which a specified time interval has been added.

Syntax

DateAdd ( interval, number, date )

The DateAdd function syntax has these arguments:

Argument	Description
interval	Required. String expression that is the interval of time you want to add.
number	Required. Numeric expression that is the number of intervals you want to add. It can be positive (to get dates in the future) or negative (to get dates in the past).
date	Required. Variant (Date) or literal representing date to which the interval is added.

Tip: In Access 2010, the Expression Builder has IntelliSense, so you can see what arguments your expression requires. 

Settings

The intervalargument has these settings:

Setting	Description
yyyy	Year
q	Quarter
m	Month
y	Day of year
d	Day
w	Weekday
ww	Week
h	Hour
n	Minute
s	Second

Remarks

You can use the DateAdd function to add or subtract a specified time interval from a date. For example, you can use DateAdd to calculate a date 30 days from today or a time 45 minutes from now.

To add days to date, you can use Day of Year ("y"), Day ("d"), or Weekday ("w").

The DateAdd function will not return an invalid date. The following example adds one month to January 31:

DateAdd("m", 1, "31-Jan-95")

In this case, DateAdd returns 28-Feb-95, not 31-Feb-95. If date is 31-Jan-96, it returns 29-Feb-96 because 1996 is a leap year.

If the calculated date would precede the year 100 (that is, you subtract more years than are in date), an error occurs.

If number isn't a Long value, it is rounded to the nearest whole number before being evaluated.

Note:  The format of the return value for DateAdd is determined by Control Panel settings, not by the format that is passed in the date argument.

Note:  For date, if the Calendar property setting is Gregorian, the supplied date must be Gregorian. If the calendar is Hijri, the supplied date must be Hijri. If month values are names, the name must be consistent with the current Calendar property setting. To minimize the possibility of month names conflicting with the current Calendar property setting, enter numeric month values (Short Date format).

Query examples

Expression	Results
SELECT DateAdd("YYYY",1,[DateofSale]) AS Expr1 FROM ProductSales;	Returns the results by adding 1 year to the date values of the field "DateofSale".
SELECT DateAdd("YYYY",-1,[DateofSale]) AS Expr1 FROM ProductSales;	Returns the results by subtracting 1 year to the date values of the field "DateofSale".
SELECT DateAdd("d",10,[DateofSale]) AS NewDate FROM ProductSales;	Returns the results in column "NewDate" by adding 10 days to the date values of the field "DateofSale".
SELECT DateAdd("ww",-1,[DateofSale]) AS NewDate FROM ProductSales;	Returns the results in column "NewDate" by subtracting 1 week (7 days) from the date values of the field "DateofSale".

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 takes a date as input and uses the DateAdd function to display a corresponding date a specified number of months in the future.

Dim FirstDate As Date    ' Declare variables.
Dim IntervalType As String
Dim Number As Integer
Dim Msg
IntervalType = "m"    ' "m" specifies months as interval.
FirstDate = InputBox("Enter a date")
Number = InputBox("Enter number of months to add")
Msg = "New date: " & _
    DateAdd(IntervalType, Number, FirstDate)
MsgBox Msg

See Also

Choose the right date function