Excel Date Query/Confirmation

[Arts]

Hi all

I have a list of due dates and actual end dates as listed below, I have been told that if the actual end date is within two weeks of the due date then this can be seen as "within time". The Due Date is attained from a report and is sometimes blank so I have used the formula =IF(ISBLANK(Sheet2!F3),"",Sheet2!F3)

I was going to add 14 days to the Due date to compensate for the allowance so my edited formula would be =IF(ISBLANK(Sheet2!F3),"",Sheet2!F3+14) . My question is do I just add 14 to the Due Date?

Reason I ask is that researching online I saw that I need to use the DATE function but adding 14 seems to do the trick. Just want to confirm that by adding 14 this wont come back to me bite me somehow in the future and is the correct method or should I/do I need to use =IF(ISBLANK(Sheet2!F3),"",DATE(YEAR(Sheet2!F3),MONTH(Sheet2!F3),DAY(Sheet2!F3+14)))

Over research here has confused me!

Due Date	Actual End date
30/08/23​	11/05/23​
30/06/22​	21/04/22​
31/03/23​	20/03/23​
31/03/23​	20/03/23​
31/03/23​	20/03/23​
31/05/23​	22/05/23​

Thanks all for your help as always

 

[Joe4]

Yes, if you have a valid date, just adding 14 will add 14 days to it.

The key is understanding how Excel stores dates. It actually stores them as numbers, specifically the number of days since January 0, 1900.
So dates are really just numbers in Excel with date formats applied to them. Time is a fractional component of one day.

So since Excel stores dates as the number of days from a set starting point, adding a whole number will add that many days to your date.

 

[Arts]

Yes, if you have a valid date, just adding 14 will add 14 days to it.

The key is understanding how Excel stores dates. It actually stores them as numbers, specifically the number of days since January 0, 1900.
So dates are really just numbers in Excel with date formats applied to them. Time is a fractional component of one day.

So since Excel stores dates as the number of days from a set starting point, adding a whole number will add that many days to your date.

Thanks for confirming Joe!

 

[Joe4]

You are welcome.