NowFrom the Not Just Numbers blog:

A reminder of a couple of looming deadlines before I get into today’s post:

Firstly, tomorrow is the last day to complete the poll on which version of Excel you use. Please complete the poll (at the top right of the blog) so that I can understand what readers are using.

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OK, on with today’s tip…

There are two ways you might want to capture and use the current date and/or time:

  • Referring to the current date and/or time in a formula;
  • Entering the current date or time in a cell
Referring to the current date and/or time in a formula

Excel offers two functions for this purpose.
The TODAY function evaluates to today’s date and is entered as follows (it has no arguments):
=TODAY()
The NOW function works similar to today, but also includes the current time.
If you want to know how Excel handles dates and times, take a look at my earlier post on the subject.
Entering the current date or time in a cell

Sometimes, however, it is not a dynamic reference to the the current date or time that you want, but to enter a fixed version of the current date or time into a cell. The following two shortcuts will allow you to do this:

Ctrl+;   this enters the current date in the active cell

Ctrl+: (i.e. Ctrl+Shift+;) enters the current time in the active cell
These are great for if you want to log, say, the start and end times of an activity as you do it.

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