Here’s a basic but useful Excel formula. I haven’t been blogging much lately so want to create a few helpful posts. Noticed when I was sharing a more complicated formula that some of the smaller pieces might not be well understood.

Basic DAY Function

=DAY(A1)

• Returns the day as a number (1-31)
• Example: If A1 contains 6/25/2025, this returns 25

For Today’s Date

=DAY(TODAY())

• Returns the current day of the month
• Updates automatically each day

Common Examples

Text Format (if you want “01” instead of “1”)

=TEXT(DAY(A1),"00")

• Returns day with leading zero for single digits
• Example: Day 3 becomes “03”, Day 15 stays “15”

Extract Day from Text Date

If your date is stored as text (like “June 25, 2025”):

=DAY(DATEVALUE(A1))

Multiple Cells

To get the day from multiple date cells, just change the cell reference:

• =DAY(B5) for cell B5
• =DAY(M2) for cell M2
• etc.

Note:

• The DAY function only works with actual Excel date values
• If your cell contains text that looks like a date, use DATEVALUE first
• The result is always a number from 1 to 31