Instantly enter today's date or time

- [Voiceover] Anytime you need to type today's date, and some people do type it often during the course of a day, don't type it, use a keystroke shortcut, and certainly not an obvious one. Maybe I've got some sale items here. I don't have anything else filled in. I'm gonna make Column Q wider, I'm gonna put in some other dates, and one of these entries, maybe the first one, is going to be today's date. At the time of this recording it's March 1st, 2016. I'm not gonna type that, I'm going to press Ctrl + ;. Puts in today's date, it's really handy.

That will not change, it's simply a shortcut for typing. If I wanted to put in a nearby date, I might also press that same keystroke shortcut. It puts in today's date, but maybe I'll double-click right here, I need to put in for example, the 12th. So it's easier than typing all those entries. Simply double-click in there and make a change where needed. So it's easy to enter the date. In contrast with this, there's a similar feature called Equal Today, a function, and as you type it you need to type at least the left parenthesis.

You don't have to type a right parenthesis, Excel will do this for you. As you complete the entry, it'll put in today's date as well. But this is different, because what this means is, at any given time, as you're looking at this file, this will always be today's date, whenever that might be. If I close this file and save it, and open it the following day, it's going to be March 2nd right here. This is the function called Today. Remember, as you type it, =TODAY + ( + Enter, that completes it.

If you need to put in the current time and you simply want it as a static entry, and we wouldn't be putting it in this column so let's imagine maybe we needed it over here somewhere, if you want to put in the current time it's Ctrl + Shift + ;. At the time of this recording right now, it's 3:28pm. That's the way it's displayed. That too is a shortcut for typing, and by the way, if you were typing that, you would type three colon 28 space P, or you could type, and some people prefer this style, 15 colon 28 like that.

Now, similar to entering today's date, by way of a function, if you'd like to enter the date that way, type Equal + now. But it isn't quite the same because what we get now, and we'll have to make the column wider, is the date and the time. Notice it's a minute later, too. Now if we sit and stare at this nothing will happen, but if we do other things in the worksheet and come back and look at this, it's not going to say 15:29 anymore. So here's the function called Now. Not exactly a shortcut, but again this has value in other formulas.

If you're looking for shortcuts, this isn't necessarily the way to go. If you prefer to see this being displayed only as a time, you can use the keystroke shortcut, it's Ctrl + Shift + @, but it displays the data in am/pm style. Which, if you like it, fine, if not, you'll have to make a change by going to Format Cells. So, once again, a quick way to enter today's date is simply Ctrl + ; current time Ctrl + Shift + ;. Now it's 3:30, the time has changed.

You see how this is working. These are valuable tools, some people are finding themselves typing the current date frequently throughout the day, simply press Ctrl + ;.