How Many Days Old Are You?

Ever wonder how many days you've been on this earth? It's easy to calculate a child's age in days, but the older you get the tougher the math gets. Not only that, after a few leap years everything just gets out of whack. There is a super-simple way to do it, though, that doesn't involve pulling out a calculator. You just use a spreadsheet.

You can either use Microsoft Excel® or, if you don't have that software handy, make a spreadsheet in Google Documents.

Here's How

1) Open a spreadsheet and format Column A as a date. Repeat for Column B.

• Excel: Click the column header and choose “Home” from the toolbar, then click the format drop-down list and change the column's format to “Date.”
• Google Docs: Click the column A header to highlight the column. Click the down arrow beside the “1-2-3” in the toolbar and select “Date” from the drop-down.

2) Type your birthdate in cell A1. Type today's date in cell B1.
3) Click in Cell C1 and create a formula to perform date subtraction. Type = B1 - A1 and press "Enter." Your age in days appears automagically.

Here's how old some famous people are on the day I wrote this, with both Excel and Google versions. The formula displayed is for the cell highlighted in yellow (Julio Iglesias' age in days).

Excel Spreadsheet

Google Documents Spreadsheet

You can use a spreadsheet for other date calculations, too: for instance, if you were born on May 10, 1964, you will be 25,000 days old on October 20, 2032. It's the same principle. Or Calculate the difference in two peoples' ages: Madonna (8/16/58) is 10,096 days older than Lady Gaga (3/28/86).

One thing to note is that Excel won't do the calculation if the date is before January 1, 1900, so you can't calculate how old Shakespeare would be today. Google Docs doesn't have that limitation, though.