Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Calculating a Future Date.

Calculating a Future Date

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 7, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


If you are creating a macro to do some processing on a document, you may have a need to calculate a date at some point in the future. Using the VBA DateAdd function, this is quite easy. The function has the following syntax:

DateAdd(interval, number, startdate)

The original date that you begin with (typically today's date) is specified by the startdate argument. The interval argument indicates what you want to add to the startdate. For instance, if you want to add days, then interval would be the letter d. (This interval needs to be enclosed within quotes.) There are many different intervals you can specify:

Interval Meaning
d Day
ww Week
m Month
q Quarter
yyyy Year
y Day of year
w Weekday
h Hour
n Minute
s Second

Finally, the number argument specifies how many intervals you want to add to the date.

As an example, let's suppose you wanted to know the date that was 90 days in the future. You could use the following:

dFutureDate = DateAdd("d", 90, Date)

When executed, dFutureDate contains the date that is 90 days after today.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1476) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Calculating a Future Date.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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