How to count days since a date
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Age of a ticket, order, or item — how long ago something happened.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =TODAY()-A2 | A2 = the past date. Format the result as a Number. |
| Google Sheets | =TODAY()-A2 | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =TODAY()-A2 | Identical. |
How it works
Today minus the past date gives elapsed days directly — July 1 to July 26 is 25 days (the verification pins both ends; use TODAY() live and the count grows daily). If the answer displays as a date like "1/25/1900", switch the cell format to Number. Common companions: bucket the ages with the closest-match lookup recipe (0-30/31-60/61-90 aging), and NETWORKDAYS(A2,TODAY()) counts only business days elapsed.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =DATE(2026,7,26)-DATE(2026,7,1) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 25 — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 25 for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
TODAY — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
Related recipes
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- How to calculate age in years from a birth date
- How to count days until a date
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- How to get the last day of the previous month