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Hi Reader,

Welcome to the Google Sheets Tips newsletter #335, your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form!

Today, I'm sharing some formulas that I use all the time: date formulas. I do a lot of project management planning in Sheets so I'm always needing to generate sequences of dates. Below, you'll find a roundup of the most useful.

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➜ Sheets Tip #335: Useful Date Formulas in Sheets

In today's tip I want to share a bunch of useful date formulas.

These come in handy for project management work, for scheduling, for modeling, and many other time-based analysis projects.

Without further ado, here are six useful date formulas in Sheets:

Today

=TODAY()

This outputs today's date.

Start of the Current Month

We can create a specific date, such as the start of the month, with a static DATE function as follows:

=DATE(2025,2,1)

The syntax is DATE(year, month, day).

However, we can make a dynamic version that automatically updates using the EOMONTH function:

=EOMONTH(TODAY(),-1)+1

This outputs the first day of the current month.

EOMONTH gives the end of the month. The "-1" argument gives the previous month, i.e. the last day of the prior month. Then we add "+1" to get the 1st of the current month.

End of the Current Month

=EOMONTH(TODAY(),0)

Start of the Next Month

=EOMONTH(TODAY(),0)+1

End of the Prior Month

=EOMONTH(TODAY(),-1)

Next 12 Months

We use the SEQUENCE function to generate 12 rows of data that we turn into months:

=ArrayFormula(EOMONTH(TODAY(),SEQUENCE(12,1,-1))+1)

Interestingly, we can also use the native array functionality of the SORT function to shorten this to:

=SORT(EOMONTH(TODAY(),SEQUENCE(12,1,-1))+1)

It's also of course possible to create a simpler hard-coded version of this monthly sequence:

=ArrayFormula(DATE(2025,SEQUENCE(12,1,2),1))

In our Sheet, these formulas look like this:

In my own work, I've used countless variations of formulas like this last one.

For example, I have a Sheet to track these newsletters and plan upcoming issues:

The date column formula is:

=ArrayFormula(DATE(2025,2,17) + SEQUENCE(100,1,0,7))

Stuck? Use AI to help

If you're struggling to get the formula to work, create a list of the first 5 or 10 rows of dates, then plug it into your favorite AI tool and ask it to create a formula for you.

E.g. try a prompt like this:

What's the Google Sheets formula that would generate weekly dates like this: 17-Feb-2025, 24-Feb-2025, 3-Mar-2025, 10-Mar-2025, 17-Mar-2025, 24-Mar-2025, etc.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to a friend who might enjoy it.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. An accurate summary of the current state of AI