Current Date and Time in Excel

What this does

TODAY returns the current date; NOW returns the date with the time attached. Both are volatile: they recalculate whenever anything in the workbook changes, so a cell holding =TODAY() is not a record of when something happened, it is always "now". That is the single most consequential thing to know about them — a timestamp meant to stay put must be entered with Ctrl+; (date) or Ctrl+Shift+; (time), or pasted as a value. Their genuine use is anything that should move with the calendar: ageing an invoice, counting days remaining, driving a conditional format for overdue rows. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. For “current date and time in excel”, the reliable version is a short checking loop, not just the first command that appears to work. Run it on a deliberately small range first, watch how the affected cells change, and only then apply the same setup to the full sheet. When a formula is involved, keep the inputs labelled beside it, reference cells instead of typing values, and apply number formatting only after the result checks out. That is what makes a workflow that saves repeating the same clicks every week useful in real work: repeatable, auditable, and not dependent on memory or luck.

A worked example

Days a receivable has been outstanding: =TODAY()-A2, formatted as a number rather than a date. Flagging overdue rows with conditional formatting: =AND(A2<TODAY(), B2<>"Paid"). Days remaining until a deadline: =A2-TODAY(). A static stamp instead — press Ctrl+; which types the date once and never changes it. TODAY and NOW are what make an ageing report age itself — and knowing they are volatile is what stops them being used as timestamps. If there is any chance you will reuse this, drop it into a small template tab right now: a labelled input area on the left and the formula beside it, checked once against the tool above. Next time the same question comes up, the answer is a single paste away instead of a rebuild from memory.

In Google Sheets

Google Sheets handles this almost identically to Excel. The formula syntax above is the same, and the menu lives under a slightly different label rather than a ribbon tab. Use the platform toggle at the top of the page to switch every keyboard shortcut between Windows and Mac, and expect at most cosmetic differences in naming. Nothing on this page is behind a login: the tool runs entirely in your browser, the formula is shown in full with one-click copy, and the steps work the same on Windows and Mac. That is the whole promise here — the exact answer, a way to prove it on your own numbers, and just enough context to make it stick. If you take one thing from this page on “current date and time in excel”, make it the habit rather than the keystrokes: set the problem up with labelled inputs, reference those cells, and let Excel do the recomputing. Bookmark the page for the syntax, but do the example once in a blank sheet and check it against the tool above — five minutes of hands-on practice fixes the method in memory far better than re-reading, and it surfaces the small snags while they are still harmless. After that the technique is genuinely yours: faster than searching for it again, and reliable enough to drop into work that other people depend on.

Common mistakes

• Using =TODAY() as a record of when something was entered, which rewrites itself every time the file opens.
• Formatting a date difference as a date, which shows 1900-01-15 instead of 14 days.
• Forgetting the brackets; =TODAY without them returns #NAME?.

Frequently asked questions