Which formula returns the four-digit year from the date in cell A2 by extracting the last four digits of the date?

Which formula returns the four-digit year from the date in cell A2 by extracting the last four digits of the date?

• A. =YEAR(A2)
• B. =TEXT(A2,"yyyy")
• C. =RIGHT(TEXT(A2,"mm/dd/yyyy"),4)
• D. =MID(A2,5,4)

Answer: (C)

The concept being tested is obtaining the year by using the date’s textual representation and then grabbing its last four characters. Formatting the date as mm/dd/yyyy standardizes where the year appears, and taking the rightmost four characters returns exactly the four digits of the year. This formula does that directly: it converts the date to a string in a fixed mm/dd/yyyy format, then uses RIGHT(..., 4) to pull the last four characters, which are the year. That matches the task of extracting the last four digits of the date. Other approaches can give the year as a value or as text, but they don’t follow the instruction to extract the last four digits from the date’s text representation. For example, a function that returns the year component or formats to yyyy alone bypasses the step of taking the final four characters, and a MID operation on the date’s text wouldn’t reliably yield just the year.

The concept being tested is obtaining the year by using the date’s textual representation and then grabbing its last four characters. Formatting the date as mm/dd/yyyy standardizes where the year appears, and taking the rightmost four characters returns exactly the four digits of the year.

This formula does that directly: it converts the date to a string in a fixed mm/dd/yyyy format, then uses RIGHT(..., 4) to pull the last four characters, which are the year. That matches the task of extracting the last four digits of the date.

Other approaches can give the year as a value or as text, but they don’t follow the instruction to extract the last four digits from the date’s text representation. For example, a function that returns the year component or formats to yyyy alone bypasses the step of taking the final four characters, and a MID operation on the date’s text wouldn’t reliably yield just the year.