What YEAR does
YEAR extracts the year portion from a valid Excel date. It is useful for reporting, grouping data by year, and building date logic that depends on the calendar year.
Practical examples
Extract the year from a date cell
=YEAR(A2)
If A2 contains 2026-03-19, the result is 2026.
Extract the year from a generated date
=YEAR(DATE(2030,6,15))
This returns 2030 and works well when the date is created inside another formula.
Common mistakes and notes
YEAR expects a real Excel date
If the input is text that only looks like a date, YEAR may return an error or parse it incorrectly.
YEAR does not format the original date
It returns only the numeric year. If you want the full original date to display differently, use cell formatting or the TEXT function.
Time values are ignored
If a cell contains a date-time value, YEAR uses the date portion only.