The DATE function is a date and time function which takes the three arguments required for a valid date in Excel (Year, Month, Day) and returns the result in the system date format. Without date formatting, the result will look like a seemingly random string of numbers.

This is the format of the DATE function:

=DATE(YEAR VALUE, MONTH VALUE, DAY VALUE)

Here is an example of the DATE function:

=DATE(2020, 5, 4) = May 4, 2020

This function is valuable when the information about a piece of data is spread over multiple cells, or are in one cell that Excel does not consider to be a date format. It also supports creating dates and values for templates based on other inputs within a worksheet.

An example of a functional implementation of this would be a budget spreadsheet where line items are itemized within months, and need to be summarized into an annual budget presented by category by month. Next to each line item in the first itemized section you would use the DATE function to give you data points to reference in a SUMIFS function.

ex: Year is stored in cell A1, Month in column B, and your first line item is on row 8

=DATE(A1, B8, 1) = February 1, 2020