Converting Google spreadsheet date into a JS Date object?

Question

I\'ve been going round in circles on this one... I\'ve got a spreadsheet which holds two dates, and I need to find the number of elapsed years between the two (ie. someone\'

Answer 1

By "serial number" I'm guessing you're talking about a unix time in seconds or milliseconds from the epoch. You can simply use the standard Javascript Date object:

new Date(value);

Google is your friend from there. Here's some references to start you off:

• W3 Schools reference
• W3 Schools tutorial
• MDN reference

Javascript allows you to do simple subtraction with two Dates, returning you the time difference in ms.

var timeDiffInMS = date2 - date1;

That should be all you need to figure it out, so I'll leave the years calculation as an exercise for the reader.