Excel serial date to real date
Days since the 1900 date system's zero; the fraction is the time of day, read as UTC.
Excel stores dates as serial numbers: days since its 1900 epoch, with the time of day as a fraction. 45261.75 is December 1, 2023 at 18:00. If a spreadsheet ever handed you a five-digit number where a date should be, that's what it is. Paste one below to convert it, fraction and all. The same encoding appears as OADate in .NET and in many CSV exports.
Detected: Excel serial date
Your timezone
UTC · GMT+00:00 · UTC
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 12:00:00 AM
Common formats
UTC
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 12:00:00 AM
ISO 8601
2023-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
Unix (seconds)
1701388800
Unix (millis)
1701388800000
Relative
…
World clock
Los Angeles PST
Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 04:00:00 PM
GMT-08:00
Chicago CST
Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 06:00:00 PM
GMT-06:00
New York EST
Thu, Nov 30, 2023, 07:00:00 PM
GMT-05:00
London GMT
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 12:00:00 AM
GMT+00:00
Paris CET
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 01:00:00 AM
GMT+01:00
Kolkata IST
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 05:30:00 AM
GMT+05:30
Shanghai CST
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 08:00:00 AM
GMT+08:00
Tokyo JST
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 09:00:00 AM
GMT+09:00
Sydney AEDT
Fri, Dec 01, 2023, 11:00:00 AM
GMT+11:00
Do it with the API
curl https://parsetime.dev/api/t/45261?format=excelThe same conversion as JSON: no key, no signup, permissive CORS. Try this call or read the API docs.
Common questions
- Why does Excel show a number like 45261 instead of a date?
- The cell is formatted as a number rather than a date, but the underlying value is the same either way: days since the 1900 epoch. Paste the number above to see which date it is, or reformat the cell in Excel.
- How do I convert an Excel serial number to a date by formula?
- In Excel itself, just format the cell as a date. To do it arithmetically: the Unix timestamp is (serial − 25569) × 86400, because 25569 is the serial for January 1, 1970.
- What is the 1900 leap-year bug?
- Excel treats 1900 as a leap year (it wasn't) to stay compatible with Lotus 1-2-3. Serial 60 is the nonexistent February 29, 1900, so serials below 61 are one day off. Values from March 1900 onward are unaffected.
- What about the 1904 date system?
- Old Mac versions of Excel counted from January 1, 1904 instead. If a converted date is exactly 1,462 days off, the file uses the 1904 system. Add 1462 to the serial and convert again.