If you already know the components of the date value you want to use, you can include them between two # signs but following the rules of a date format from the Regional Settings of Control Panel. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = # 02/08/2003 #

    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

To get the current date of the computer, you can call the Visual Basic's Date function. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    MsgBox Date
End Sub

In Microsoft Excel, to get the current date, you can call the TODAY() function. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    Range("B2").FormulaR1C1 = "=TODAY()"
End Sub

When you compose a date value, you must follow some rules. The rules depend on the language you are using. We will review those of the US English.

In a year, a month is recognized by an index in a range from 1 to 12. A month also has a name. The name of a month is given in two formats: complete or short. These are:

A week is a combination of 7 consecutive days of a month. Each day can be recognized by an index from 1 to 7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). The day of each index is recognized by a name. In US English, the first day has an index of 1 is named Sunday while the last day with an index of 7 is named Monday. Like the months of a year, the days of a week have long and short names. These are:

These are the default in US English. In most calculations, the Visual Basic language allows you to specify what day should be the first in a week.

The year is expressed as a numeric value.

In US English, to express a date value, you can use one of the following formats:

• mm-dd-yy
• mm-dd-yyyy

You must start the date with a number that represents the month (a number from 1 to 12). After the month value, enter -. Then type the day value as a number between 1 and 28, 29, 30, or 31 depending on the month and the (leap) year. Follow it with -. End the value with a year in 2 or 4 digits. Here are examples 06-12-08 or 10-08-2006.

You can also use one of the following formats:

• dd-mmm-yy
• dd mmm yy
• dd-mmmm-yy
• dd mmmm yy
• dd-mmm-yyyy
• dd mmm yyyy
• dd-mmmm-yyyy
• dd mmmm yyyy

This time, enter the day value followed either by an empty space or -. Follow with the short name of the month in the mmm placeholder or the complete name of the month for the mmmm placeholder, followed by either an empty space or -. End the value with the year, using 2 or 4 digits.

As you may know already, in US English, you can start a date with the month. In this case, you can use one of the following formats:

• mmm dd, yy
• mmm dd, yyyy
• mmmm dd, yy
• mmmm dd, yyyy

As seen with the previous formats, mmm represents the short name of a month and mmmm represents the full name of a month. As mentioned already, the dd day can be expressed with 1 or 2 digits and the single digit can have a leading 0. After the day value, (you must) enter a comma followed by the year either with 2 or 4 digits.

We have seen that, when creating  a date, you can include its value between # signs. An alternative is to provide a date as a string. To support this, the Visual Basic language provides a function named DateValue. Its syntax is:

Function DateValue(ByVal StringDate As String) As Variant

When calling this function, provide a valid date as argument. The validity depends on the language of the operating system. If working in US English, you can use one of the formats we saw above. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = DateValue("22-Aug-2006")
        
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

An alternative to initializing a date variable is to use a function named DateSerial. Its syntax is:

Function DateSerial(ByVal [Year] As Integer, _
   		    ByVal [Month] As Integer, _
   		    ByVal [Day] As Integer) As Variant

As you can see, this function allows you to specify the year, the month, and the day of a date value, of course without the # signs. When it has been called, this function returns a Variant value, which can be converted into a Date. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = DateSerial(2003, 02, 08)
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

When passing the values to this function, you must restrict each component to the allowable range of values. You can pass the year with two digits from 0 to 99. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = DateSerial(03, 2, 8)
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

If you pass the year as a value between 0 and 99, the interpreter would refer to the clock on the computer to get the century. At the time of this writing (in 2009), the century would be 20 and the specified year would be added, which would produce 2003. To be more precise and reduce any confusion, you should always pass the year with 4 digits.

The month should (must) be a value between 1 and 12. If you pass a value higher than 12, the interpreter would calculate the remainder of that number by 12 (that number MOD 12 = ?). The result of the integer division would be used as the number of years and added to the first argument. The remainder would be used as the month of the date value. For example, if you pass the month as 18, the integer division would produce 1, so 1 year would be added to the first argument. The remainder is 6 (18 MOD 12 = 6); so the month would be used as 6 (June). Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = DateSerial(2003, 18, 8)
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

As another example, if you pass the month as 226, the integer division (226 \ 12) produces 18 and that number would be added to the first argument (2003 + 18 = 2021). The remainder of 226 to 12 (226 MOD 12 = 10) is 10 and that would be used as the month. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = DateSerial(2003, 226, 8)
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

If the month is passed as 0, it is considered 12 (December) of the previous year. If the month is passed as -1, it is considered 11 (November) of the previous year and so on. If the month is passed as a number lower than -11, the interpreter would calculate its integer division to 12, add 1 to that result, use that number as the year, calculate the remainder to 12, and use that result as the month.

Depending on the month, the value of the day argument can be passed as a number between 1 and 28, between 1 and 29, between 1 and 30, or between 1 and 31. If the day argument is passed as a number lower than 1 or higher than 31, the interpreter uses the first day of the month passed as the second argument. This is 1.

If the day is passed as -1, the day is considered the last day of the previous month of the Month argument. For example, if the Month argument is passed as 4 (April) and the Day argument is passed as -1, the interpreter would use 31 as the day because the last day of March is 31.

If the Month argument is passed as 3 (March) and the Day argument is passed as -1, the interpreter would refer to the Year argument to determine whether the year is leap or not. This would allow the interpreter to use either 28 or 29 for the day value. The interpreter uses this algorithm for any day value passed as the third argument when the number is lower than 1.

If the Day argument is passed with a value higher than 28, 29, 30, or 31, the interpreter uses this same algorithm in reverse order to determine the month and the day.

Besides the Visual Basic's DateSerial() function, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named DATE

When using this function, pass the values of the year, the month, and the day. You can use exactly the rules we reviewed for the DateSerial() function. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    Range("B2").FormulaR1C1 = "=DATE(2003, 226, 8)"
End Sub

This would produce:

If you have a value such as one provided as a string and you want to convert it to a date, you can call the CDate() function. Its syntax is:

Function CDate(Value As Object) As Date

This function can take any type of value but the value must be convertible to a valid date. If the function succeeds in the conversion, it produces a Date value. If the conversion fails, it produces an error.

As seen so far, a date is a value made of at least three parts: the year, the month, and the day. The order of these components and how they are put together to constitute a recognizable date depend on the language and they are defined in the Language and Regional Settings in Control Panel.

The Visual Basic language supports the year of a date ranging from 1 to 9999. This means that this is the range you can consider when dealing with dates in your worksheets. In most operations, when creating a date, if you specify a value between 1 and 99, the interpreter would use the current century for the left two digits. This means that, at the time of this writing (2009), a year such as 4 or 04 would result in the year 2004. In most cases, to be more precise, you should usually or always specify the year with 4 digits.

If you have a date value whose year you want to find out, you can call the Visual Basic's Year() function. Its syntax is:

Public Function Year(ByVal DateValue As Variant) As Integer

As you can see, this function takes a date value as argument. The argument should hold a valid date. If it does, the function returns the numerical year of a date. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date
    
    DateHired = #2/8/2004#
    MsgBox ("In the job since " & Year(DateHired))
End Sub

This would produce:

Besides the Visual Language's Year() function, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named YEAR that can be used to get the year value of a date. The date must be provided in the format the DATE() function.

The month part of a date is a numeric value that goes from 1 to 12. When creating a date, you can specify it with 1 or 2 digits. If the month is between 1 and 9 included, you can precede it with a leading 0.

If you have a date value and want to get its month, you can call the Month() function. Its syntax is:

Function Month(ByVal DateValue As Variant) As Integer

This function takes a Date object as argument. If the date is valid, the function returns a number between 1 and 12 for the month. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date
    
    DateHired = #2/8/2004#
    MsgBox ("Month hired " & Month(DateHired))
End Sub

This would produce:

Besides the Visual Basic's Month() function, you can use the MONTH() function of the Microsoft Excel library. This function takes one argument as the type of date produced by a call to the DATE() function.

As mentioned already, the Month() function produces a numeric value that represents the month of a date. Instead of getting the numeric index of the month of a date, if you want to get the name of the month, you can call the Visual Basic function named MonthName. Its syntax is:

Function MonthName(ByVal Month As Integer, _
		   Optional ByVal Abbreviate As Boolean = False) As String

This function takes one required and one optional arguments. The required argument must represent the value of a month. If it is valid, this function returns the corresponding name. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = #2/8/2004#
    MsgBox("Day hired " & MonthName(Month(DateHired)))
End Sub

This would produce:

The second argument allows you to specify whether you want to get the complete or the short name. The default is the complete name, in which case the default value of the argument is False. If you want to get the short name, pass the second argument as True. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = #2/8/2004#

    MsgBox("Month hired " & MonthName(Month(DateHired), True))
End Sub

This would produce:

The day is a numeric value in a month. Depending on the month (and the year), its value can range from 1 to 29 (February in a leap year), from 1 to 28 (February in a non-leap year), from 1 to 31 (January, March, May, July, August, October, and December), or from 1 to 30 (April, June, September, and November).

If you have a date value and you want to know its day in a year, you can call the Day() function. Its syntax is:

Function Day(ByVal DateValue As Variant) As Integer

This function takes a date as argument. If the date is valid, the function returns the numeric day in the month of the date argument. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = #2/8/2004#
    MsgBox("Day hired " & Day(DateHired))
End Sub

This would produce:

To get the name of the day of a week, you can a function named WeekdayName. Its syntax is:

Function WeekdayName( _
   ByVal Weekday As Integer, _
   Optional ByVal Abbreviate As Boolean = False, _
   Optional ByVal FirstDayOfWeekValue As Integer = 0 _
) As String

This function takes one required and two optional arguments. The required argument must be, or represent, a value between 0 and 7. If you pass it as 0, the interpreter will refer to the operating system's language to determine the first day of the week, which in US English is Sunday. Otherwise, if you pass one of the indexes we saw above, the function would return the corresponding name of the day. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    MsgBox("Day hired: " & WeekdayName(4))
End Sub

This would produce:

If you pass a negative value or a value higher than 7, you would receive an error.

The second argument allows you to specify whether you want to get the complete or the short name. The default value of this argument is False, which produces a complete name. If you want a short name, pass the second argument as True. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    MsgBox("Day hired: " & WeekdayName(4, True))
End Sub

As mentioned already, the Visual Basic language allows you to specify what days should be the first day of the week. This is the role of the third argument.

Formatting a date consists of specifying how the value would be displayed to the user. The Visual Basic language provides various options. The US English language supports two primary date formats known as long date and short date. You can check them in the Date property page of the Customize Regional Options accessible from the Regional Settings in Control Panel:

To support these primary formats, the Visual Basic language provides a function named FormatDateTime. Its syntax is:

Function FormatDateTime(
   ByVal Expression As Variant,
   Optional ByVal NamedFormat As Integer = 0
) As String

The first argument of this function must be a valid Date value. The second argument is an integer. For a date, this argument can be 1 or 2. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired$

    DateHired$ = FormatDateTime("22-Aug-2006", 1)
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & DateHired)
End Sub

This would produce:

To support more options, the Visual Basic language provides the Format() function that we saw in the previous lesson. We saw that its syntax was:

Function Format( _
   ByVal Expression As Object, _
   Optional ByVal Style As String = "" _
) As String

Remember that the first argument is the date that needs to be formatted. The second argument is a string that contains the formatting to apply. To create it, you use a combination of the month, day, and/or year characters we saw as date formats. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DateHired As Date

    DateHired = #12/28/2006#
    MsgBox("Date Hired: " & Format(DateHired, "MMMM dd, yyyy"))
End Sub

This would produce:

The Visual Basic language supports time values. To create a time value, you can declare a variable of type Date. To initialize the variable, create a valid value using the rules specified in the Regional and language Settings of Control Panel, and include that value between two # signs. Here is an example;

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DepositTime As Date

    DepositTime = #7:14#
    MsgBox("Deposit Time: " & DepositTime)
End Sub

This would produce:

To get the current time of the computer, you can call the Time function of the Visual Basic language. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    Range("B2").FormulaR1C1 = Time
End Sub

To get a combination of the date and the time of the computer, you can call a function named Now. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    Range("B2").FormulaR1C1 = Now
End Sub

In Microsoft Excel, to get a combination of the date and time of the computer, you can call a function named NOW. Here is an example:

Sub Exercise()
    Range("B2").FormulaR1C1 = "=NOW()"
End Sub

Instead of including the time in # signs, you can also provide it as a string. To support this, the Visual Basic language provides a function named TimeValue. Its syntax is:

Function TimeValue(ByVal StringTime As String) As Variant

This function expects a valid time as argument. If that argument is valid, the function returns a time value. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DepositTime As Date

    DepositTime = TimeValue("7:14")
    MsgBox("Deposit Time: " & DepositTime)
End Sub

As an alternative to initializing a time variable, you can call a function named TimeSerial. Its syntax is:

Function TimeSerial(ByVal Hour As Integer, _
		    ByVal Minute As Integer, _
   		    ByVal Second As Integer) As Variant

This function allows you to specify the hour, the minute, and the second values of a time. If you pass valid values, the function returns a time. Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim DepositTime As Date

    DepositTime = TimeSerial(7, 14, 0)
    MsgBox("Deposit Time: " & DepositTime)
End Sub

To support the ability to create a time value, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named TIME:

This function takes three arguments as the hour, the minute, and the second.

In US English, a time is made of various parts. The first of them is the hour. The time is a 24th spatial division of a day. It is represented by a numeric value between 0 and 23. When creating a time value, you specify the hour on the left side. To get the hour of a valid time, you can call a function named Hour. Its syntax is:

Function Hour(ByVal TimeValue As Variant) As Integer

This function takes a time value as argument. If a valid time is passed, the function returns the hour part.

To support the hour part of a time value, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named HOUR.

An hour is divided in 60 parts. Each part is called a minute and is represented by a numeric value between 0 and 59. If you have a time value and want to get its minute part, you can call a function named Minute. Its syntax is:

Function Minute(ByVal TimeValue As Variant) As Integer

When calling this function, pass it a time value. If the argument holds a valid value, the function returns a number between 0 and 59 and that represents the minutes.

To support the minute part of a time value, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named MINUTE.

A minute is divided in 60 parts and each part is called a second. It is represented by a numeric value between 0 and 59. If you have a time value and want to extract a second part from it, you can call the Second() function named . Its syntax is:

Public Function Second(ByVal TimeValue As Variant) As Integer

If you call this function, pass a valid time. If so, the function would return a number represents the seconds part.

To support the second part of a time value, the Microsoft Excel library provides a function named SECOND.

Because dates and times are primarily considered as normal values, there are various operations you can perform on them. You can add or subtract a number of years or add or subtract a number of months, etc. The Visual Basic language provides its own mechanisms for performing such operations thanks to its vast library of functions.

To support the addition of a value to a date or a time, the Visual Basic language provides a function named DateAdd. Its syntax is:

Function DateAdd( _
   ByVal Interval As String, _
   ByVal Number As Double, _
   ByVal DateValue As Object _
) As Variant

This function takes three arguments that all are required.

The DateValue argument is the date or time value on which you want to perform this operation. It must be a valid Date value.

The Interval argument is passed as a string. It specifies the kind of value you want to add. This argument will be enclosed between double quotes and can have one of the following values:

The Number argument specifies the number of Interval units you want to add to the DateValue value. If you set it as positive, its value will be added. Here are examples:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim LoanStartDate As Date
    Dim DepositTime As Date

    LoanStartDate = #6/10/1998#
    DepositTime = TimeValue("7:14:00")
    
    MsgBox ("Loan Length: " & DateAdd("yyyy", 5, LoanStartDate))
    MsgBox ("Time Ready: " & DateAdd("h", 8, DepositTime))
End Sub

This would produce:

Instead of adding a value to a date or a time value, you may want to subtract. To perform this operation, pass the Number argument as a negative value. Here are examples:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim LoanPayDate As Date
    Dim TimeReady As Date

    LoanPayDate = #8/12/2008#
    TimeReady = TimeValue("17:05")
    
    MsgBox ("Loan Length: " & DateAdd("m", -48, LoanPayDate))
    MsgBox ("Time Deposited: " & DateAdd("n", -360, TimeReady))
End Sub

This would produce:

Another valuable operation performed consists of finding the difference between two date or time values. To help you perform this operation, the Visual Basic language provides a function named DateDiff. This function allows you to find the number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years from two valid date or time values. The DateDiff function takes 5 arguments, 3 are required and 2 are optional.

The syntax of the function is

Function DateDiff( _
    ByVal Interval As [ DateInterval | String ], _
    ByVal Date1 As Variant, _
    ByVal Date2 As Variant, _
    Optional ByVal DayOfWeek As Interger = 1, _
    Optional ByVal  WeekOfYear As Integer = 1 _
) As Long

This function takes five arguments, three of which are required and two are optional.

The Date1 argument can be the start date or start time. The Date2 argument can be the end date or end time. These two arguments can also be reversed, in which case the Date2 argument can be the start date or start time and the Date1 argument would be the end date or end time. These two values must be valid date or time values

The Interval argument specifies the type of value you want as a result. This argument will be enclosed between double quotes and can have one of the following values:

Here is an example:

Public Sub Exercise
    Dim LoanStartDate As Date
    Dim LoanEndDate As Date
    Dim Months As Long

    LoanStartDate = #8/12/2003#
    LoanEndDate = #10/5/2008#
    Months = DateDiff("m", LoanStartDate, LoanEndDate)
    
    MsgBox("Loan Start Date: " & vbTab & LoanStartDate & vbCrLf & _
           "Loan End Date: " & vbTab & LoanEndDate & vbCrLf & _
           "Loan Length: " & vbTab & Months & " months")
End Sub

This would produce:

By default, the days of a week are counted starting on Sunday. If you want to start counting those days on another day, supply the Option1 argument using one of the following values: vbSunday, vbMonday, vbTuesday, vbWednesday, vbThursday, vbFriday, vbSaturday. There are other variances to that argument.

If your calculation involves weeks or finding the number of weeks, by default, the weeks are counted starting January 1st. If you want to count your weeks starting at a different date, use the Option2 argument to specify where the function should start.

We saw that we could use the DateDiff() function to get the difference between two date or time values. The first argument can be specified as a string. A better idea is to use a member of the DateInterval enumeration. The members are:

By default, the first week of a year is the one that includes January 1st of that year. This is how it is considered in the regular date-based calculations. If you want to change this default setting, you can use the last argument of the DateDiff() function. The value of this argument can be:

To calculate the number of days between two dates considering that a year has 360 days, you can use the DAYS360() function of the Microsoft Excel library.