NOW vs TODAY Functions in Excel (3 Practical Examples)

We have a spreadsheet showing some data of an employee working for a company. Details such as the employee’s name, department, and total sales are recorded.

Example 1 – Use of TODAY Function to Find the Today’s Date

Steps:

• To show the current date in cell A2, we entered the formula:

• Upon pressing Ctrl + Enter, Excel returns the value of 9/15/2022, which is the current date, at the time of opening the workbook.

• If you open the workbook on the following day, this date updates automatically to 9/15/2022.
• We now want to format this date, to have it appear as a long date, so to do this with cell A2 selected, we go to Home>Number and then select Long Date.

• Excel returned the date formatted as a Long Date as shown below.

Example 2 – Application of the TODAY Function to Determine the Number of Days

We want to calculate the number of days since an employee was hired.

Steps:

• In cell B7, we entered the following formula:

• Upon pressing Ctrl + Enter, we get the value 3,161, which means 3,161 days have passed since the hire date of the employee at hand.

• Ensure the number format in cell B7 is General to see the number of days.

Example 3 – Determine the Time and Date by Using the NOW Function

Steps:

• In cell B2, we typed the following formula:

•  Upon pressing Ctrl + Enter, we get the current date and time returned as shown below.

• To format this with a long date format with the time, right-click the cell and choose Format Cells as shown below.

•  In the Format Cells Dialog Box, select Custom and enter:

dd mmmm yyyy hh: mm

•  Press OK and Excel will show the long date and time as shown below.

Difference Between NOW and TODAY Functions

• The NOW function returns the current time and date.
• The TODAY function returns only the date.

Things to Remember

• The TODAY and NOW functions take no arguments.

Download the Practice Workbook

<< Go Back to Excel Functions | Learn Excel