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    Calculating the difference between dates in Airtable
    • 05 Mar 2024
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    Calculating the difference between dates in Airtable

    • Dark
    • PDF

    Article summary

    Plan availability

    All plan types 

    Platform(s)

    Web/Browser, Mac app, and Windows app 

    Related reading

    Note

    • "Payment Received" and "Invoice Billed" are the exact names of our two date fields in the example below. You'll need to apply the examples below to the fields in your particular Airtable instance.

    • If your base contains date strings, in a single line text field for example, then you will need to use the DATETIME_PARSE() formula function to convert the dates from strings into a DateTime format that Airtable can use in any subsequent DATETIME_DIFF() formulas.

    Understanding the DATETIME_DIFF() function with examples

    This article covers how to calculate the difference between two dates in Airtable.

    Using the DATETIME_DIFF() function in the example below, we'll find the difference - in days - between two dates.

    DATETIME_DIFF(
      {Payment Received},
      {Invoice Billed},
      'days'
    )
    Plain text

    360056111474ScreenShot2020-01-27at52513PM.jpg
    Another common use of DATETIME_DIFF() is to find the difference between a record's date and today's date. You can use DATETIME_DIFF() in combination with the TODAY() formula to dynamically find the difference from today's date.

    DATETIME_DIFF(
      TODAY(),
      {Invoice Billed},
      'days'
    )
    Plain text

    1500011460402now.png

    For another example, you can also use DATETIME_DIFF to find someone's age when given their birthday:

    DATETIME_DIFF(
      {Birth Date},
      NOW(),
      'years'
    ) * -1
    Plain text

    4415804352791birthdate.jpg

    Displaying in decimal format

    In another example, if you need to measure the time an employee spends working each day, you could create two date fields to track their clock-in and clock-out times. Using a DATETIME_DIFF() function like the following, you can display the total hours worked for the day.

    DATETIME_DIFF({Clock Out},{Clock In},'minutes')  / 60
    Plain text

    360045331974ScreenShot2019-09-04at60843PM.jpg

    Displaying in duration format

    Since duration fields store values in seconds, you can tweak the formula to output the DATETIME_DIFF() value in seconds instead of minutes.  That way, if we format it as a duration using h:mm, we get the expected result.

    DATETIME_DIFF({Clock Out},{Clock In},'seconds')
    Plain text

    360046189453ScreenShot2019-09-04at61129PM.jpg


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