Excel Tutorial – NOW

The NOW function in Microsoft Excel is a function that returns the current date and time. 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 NOW function, follow these steps:

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

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

=A1&” updated on “&NOW()

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

You can also use the NOW 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=””, NOW(), A1)

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

I hope this tutorial has helped you understand how to use the NOW function in Microsoft Excel.