Set Due Date Reminder Formula in Excel

Excel is an incredibly helpful tool with limitless options. One of these options is to set a reminder for a certain thing, in a form of a date preferably, that will be used to show if something or someone is due with his obligations.

We can use either formula or conditional formatting to highlight these dates. In the examples below, we will show how to do it.

Set Due Date Reminder with Formula

The first thing that we are going to do is to create a list of loans and their due dates:

Once we have these numbers, it is easy to set the right formula. The formula will be placed in cell C2, and will be as follows:

Basically, this formula says that, if the loan is older than today’s date (9th of June) plus 10 days, then it is overdue, and it will write „YES“. If it is not, then it will simply type in “NO”.

After inserting this formula in cell C2, we will drag it till the end of our table (cell C6), and will end up with the following results:

Of course, it was not necessary to insert today’s date. You can change this date in the formula with any other date of your choice.

Set Due Date Reminder with Conditional Formatting

We did not have to go into trouble and insert a formula in a separate column. What we could have done is go and select the dates for which we want to set some kind of differentiation (range B2:B6 in our case), and then go to Home >> Conditional Formatting >> New Rule:

Once there, in the window that appears, we will click on Format only cells contained in the Select a Rule Type section. In the Rule Description, we will choose Cell Value in the first dropdown list, and Less than in the second dropdown list. In the part where we can insert the formula we will do just that, and insert =today()+10:

This formula will do the same thing as the first one that we showed. We still do not have the format set, and for that, we need to click on the Format button. Once there, we will go to the Home tab, and then choose the red color (or any other, for that matter):

We will click OK and have our final results as follows:

You will notice that only the cells where we have “YES” in column C are colored in red in column B, which means this is correct.

Tomasz Decker is an Excel specialist, skilled in data analysis and financial modeling.