Sharepoint Designer - is there a way to calculate a date difference in a workflow?

Question

Maybe I'm just crazy... So, with SPD I can add any time unit to a date and put that into a variable, but I can't seem to find anything that will let me calculate the difference between two dates. "Do Calculation" only lets me pick from numeric values. Am I missing something here? Seems like something which should be obvious.

Answer 1

Date comparison is not available "out of the box", but there are some workarounds.

Maybe this article: How to perform date calculations and construct dynamic strings in a SharePoint Designer workflow provides the answer?

Some more related information here: Modifying Date Formats in SharePoint Designer Workflows

Answer 2

As of SharePoint 2013 you can use "Find Interval Between Dates" action.

Find Interval Between Dates
Calculates the time interval in minutes, hours, or days between two dates and stores the output in a variable.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/jj164026.aspx

Answer 3

You can use the function DATEDIF of SharePoint lists to set a column value and then use it in workflows. I am sure, this will help someone out there -

Answer 4

String and date manipulation as well as calculations are a pain in SharePoint Designer workflows. The links Colin mentioned are good, but you may also want to consider embedding C# or vb.net code directly into your SharePoint Designer Workflow (Without the need for Visual Studio).

I wrote a component that allows you to do this and blogged about it at the following URL:

http://www.muhimbi.com/blog/2009/12/embed-c-or-vb-code-directly-in.html