The syntax here follows Zoho Sheet’s currently published English function help, checked October 11, 2026. Those articles do not publish a per-function introduction version, desktop/mobile support matrix, or guarantee of identical historical behavior. Zoho’s September 2026 What’s New says the Windows and macOS beta desktop apps support Excel’s native formula syntax by default for offline files. As a result, separator punctuation and behavior must be checked in the actual web or desktop editor: this tutorial shows semicolons exactly as in the official Zoho function article, and does not silently equate them with comma-delimited Excel formulas.

Zoho’s spreadsheet locale settings control date display, date interpretation, and time zone, among other items. The intended results below are calendar dates or integers; a date that displays differently after import is not necessarily a different calculated date.

Create a new sheet with these headers: A1 Event, B1 Year, C1 Month, D1 Day, E1 Event date. Enter the six data rows below. The dates shown in column E are expected date displays, not date-text strings you should paste.

In E2, enter =DATE(B2;C2;D2) using the vendor-reference punctuation and fill the formula down through E7. Then format E2:E7 as dates (for example, ISO-style YYYY-MM-DD). Depending on locale, the visible representation may differ without changing the underlying date. If CSV is easier, use the attached date-components-practice.csv for columns A:D, and build E2:E7 with DATE after import. This is important because imported ISO-looking strings are not guaranteed to be parsed as true dates.

Use the E-column date values, rather than manually typing ambiguous strings like 03/04/2024, in the formulas that follow. For a quick single-cell check independent of a dataset, nest DATE(2024;2;29) inside the function.

With the example table set up, enter =YEAR(E2) in F2 and fill down F7. The expected results are 2024, 2025, 2026, 2023, 2026, 2024. To test without preparing the table first, enter =YEAR(DATE(2024;2;29)), which returns 2024.

You can sort on the numeric YEAR output; however, extracting a year discards month/day detail. If E2 and E7 both have year 2024, they still occur on distinct calendar dates.

Tag audit rows belonging to a target calendar year:

=IF(YEAR(E4)=2026;"2026 audit";"Other year")

For the October audit in E4, the expected result is 2026 audit. Replace 2026 with a numeric target-year cell to make the test reusable. A second check =IF(YEAR(E4)=YEAR(E6);"Same year";"Different year") returns Same year, because October 2026 and January 2026 are both in calendar year 2026.

=YEAR(E4)-YEAR(E2) independently evaluates to 2 (2026−2024). Do not label this as elapsed years or age: it ignores whether the anniversary date has passed, and should not be used by itself for birthdays, employee tenure, or interest terms.

• Year is not age: YEAR(end)-YEAR(start) can overstate completed years by one; use an anniversary-sensitive method for tenure or age.
• Wrong date source: If YEAR produces an unexpected year, use a DATE constructed from numeric components to separate data-conversion errors from extraction.
• Date text ambiguity: Official Zoho examples use strings whose meaning depends on formats. Do not rely on “2/13/00” or missing-year text across different locales.
• Error triage: A text value that cannot be interpreted as a date may cause #VALUE!; bad function spelling can cause #NAME!; deleted/moved references can cause #REF!, in line with Zoho’s generic error table.
• History and platforms: The current reference does not promise identical date handling on every historical release or mobile/desktop client; test imported files where the date serial base could differ.

YEAR is also supported by Excel and Google Sheets and typically extracts the calendar year of a valid date. The key migration risks are date serial system, parsed text, date locale and formula-argument punctuation rather than a claim that their documented simple YEAR results differ. Use four-digit dates created with DATE and verify the source cells after an Excel import. The September 2026 Zoho desktop beta syntax change applies to offline Excel formula conventions; do not mechanically replace all semicolons in shared Zoho cloud workbooks.

• DATE in Zoho Sheet
• YEAR in Zoho Sheet
• MONTH in Zoho Sheet
• DAY in Zoho Sheet
• WEEKDAY in Zoho Sheet
• IF in Zoho Sheet

• Zoho Sheet — function documentation
• spreadsheet locale and calculation settings

Verification status: Official documentation checked; example outcomes were independently reasoned or arithmetically checked where applicable. Not executed in Zoho Sheet.

• No genuine Zoho Sheet screenshots are included; this guide does not use mock application images.