NOW and TODAY sounds like the name of a bad soap opera, but they’re two functions to get the current date and time that we’ll discuss in Excel Video 163. The NOW function retrieves the computer’s date and time, while TODAY retrieves the computer’s date. Note that you have to have parenthesis after both functions or you will get an error.
I’ll show you this in the video, but NOW updates the time every the spreadsheet makes a calculation. Don’t plan on NOW updating every second like a timer.
The last thing I’ll demonstrate in today’s video is how to create something that says “Spreadsheet updated by Nate on 6/6/2011” in one cell. You need to put the text in quotes, combine it with an & sign (or use the CONCATENATE function in Excel Video 152), and then use the TEXT function from the last Excel Video. TODAY returns the number that Excel uses to designate the date. The TEXT function formats that number as a date. Here’s the TEXT part of the function if you need it.
TEXT(TODAY(),”mm/dd/yyyy”)
Stay tuned. Next time we’ll work on more date related functions.
