How to display current date and time

You may often want to enter a current date and time into a worksheet.

A simple way to do this is to enter a time or date stamp.

you’re free to do this using keyboard shortcuts.

Control semicolon enters the current date.

Control-Shift semicolon enters the current time.

Note that the date has no time component, and the current time has no date component.

However, cell D9 has both.

I refer to these as date and time stamps because the values won’t change.

They’re fixed to the time when you used the shortcut.

Excel also contains two functions that will display a current date and time.

TheTODAY functionwill display the current date, and theNOW functionwill display the current date and time.

So, only use the TODAY or NOW functions if you really want the values to change.