Date is current. How to get the current date and time in Excel

Excel from Microsoft is a powerful processor that makes it easy for many users to work daily with a large amount of table data. However, even experienced professionals who have worked with this program for many years are sometimes lost before having to insert the current date and time into the cell of the worksheet. This is mainly due to the fact that the function "Date", which would be logical to use to get the desired values, performs a completely different task. In this article, we'll tell you about the different kinds of dates used in Excel, how to get them, and the features of the application.

Types of dates

Excel considers two variants of the value "Date current". The first of these is a fixed value of the current date and time stored on the user's personal computer. Once entered in the worksheet, the value will not change regardless of the change in the real date and time. When might this option be needed? There are many answers, for example, when we store the date of the employee's employment or dismissal, we enter the date of receipt of the goods to the warehouse. These values should be static, because they do not change with time.

The second variant of the value "Date current" is dynamic, modifiable, and updatable. The most common application of this option is the value of the date and time in the corner of the worksheet, as part of the inscription "Today, May 14, 2017". This option is widely used in formulas, for example to calculate how many days have passed since a certain number. Personnel thus can find out whether the probationary period of a particular employee has not come to the end, and the warehouse employee will check whether the expiry date for the consignment has expired.

Of course, the dynamic date and time in Excel is very useful, but there is a very important nuance: there is no continuous updating of these values. The value entered will be changed when the book is rediscovered, when the macro is executed, and when various formulas are calculated. If you just leave the book open and you do not perform any of the above actions, the date and time will remain in the values that you entered once. But it's worth re-opening the book or recounting the formula as the values update.

Consider how to insert these two kinds of dates in Excel.

Date fixed, not updatable

The Excel value "Current date" can be obtained by simply pressing the Ctrl and ";" keys. Just get up on the right cell in the worksheet and immediately, while holding down the Ctrl key, click the semicolon sign. The cell will display the current date in a short format, for example, May 14, 2017.

To insert the time, perform a similar operation: while holding down the Ctrl key, press and hold Shift and also press the semicolon. All. The current time was inserted in the format "hours: minutes".

To save the date and time in the cell at once, just after inserting the date, press the spacebar and insert the time using the specified shortcut keys.

As you can see, inserting the current date of a fixed format in Excel is very simple. The only inconvenience is that on most keyboards that do not have additional buttons, it is necessary to switch to the English keyboard layout.

Date is dynamic, updated

The current date in the updated form is specified in Excel using formulas. Option two:

• The formula "= TODAY ()" allows you to get the values of the current date.
• The formula "= ТДАТА ()" allows to get the values of the current date and time.

These functions have no arguments, and the values obtained by using them are updated each time when recalculating / copying / stretching formulas or reopening a sheet.