Excel Tutorial – TODAY

The TODAY function in Microsoft Excel is a function that returns the current date. This can be useful if you want to track when a cell was updated or if you want to create a timestamp for your data.

To use the TODAY function, follow these steps:

1. Open your Excel workbook and navigate to the cell where you want to apply the TODAY function.
2. Type “=TODAY()” into the cell.
3. Press the “Enter” key to complete the formula. The cell will now display the current date.

Here’s an example of how you can use the TODAY function in a formula:

=A1&” updated on “&TODAY()

In this example, the TODAY function is used to insert the current date after the text in cell A1. The “&” symbol is used to concatenate (join) the text and the date together.

You can also use the TODAY function to update a cell automatically whenever the workbook is opened or when a cell is changed. To do this, you can use the following formula:

=IF(A1=””, TODAY(), A1)

This formula checks if cell A1 is empty. If it is, the TODAY function is used to insert the current date. If cell A1 is not empty, the original value is preserved.