SPSS Date Calculations

SPSS Date Variables Basics

SPSS date variables are not hard to work with if you understand some basics. This tutorial walks you through them by showing some simple data examples.
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SPSS Date Calculations – A Quick Tutorial

SPSS date calculations are much easier than they may seem at first. The first key to success is understanding what SPSS date variables really are. Next, choose (and possibly combine) the right date functions. This tutorial will walk you through the main ones.
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SPSS Date Conversions

Convert Numeric to Date Variable

For time calculations (such as the number of days between two dates) proper date variables are needed. In some cases, the digits of a numeric variable may represent year, month and day. This tutorial shows how to convert this format into an actual date variable.
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Extract a Year from a Date

Extracting the year (or any component) from a date is straightforward with the XDATE function.
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THIS TUTORIAL HAS 3 COMMENTS:

By Amy on June 20th, 2018
14th October 1582 is the exact timepoint that SPSS uses to calculate it's date in seconds from. Just in case anyone wants to recode a date variable using syntax. You will need this date.
By Ruben Geert van den Berg on June 20th, 2018
Hi Amy!
If you'd like to RECODE a date variable, you could do so by recoding the underlying numbers which you'll see after running something like
FORMATS mydate(f16).
However, the more likely solution for this is using DATE.DMY combined with IF as in
IF(mydate > DATE.DMY(1,1,2018)) outputvariable = ....
For recoding date ranges, try IF with RANGE with DATE.DMY.
Hope that helps!
By Amy on July 3rd, 2018
Thanks Ruben! Helpful stuff - you really are a bit of an SPSS guru ;)