Dates and Times with Excel

Excel offers numerous shortcuts and functions to make life easier when working with dates and times. Here are some examples:

Current Date and Time

Logging daily information for historical purposes can be as simple as a couple keystrokes. By using the following keystrokes, the current date, time, and/or date and time are entered into Excel and stay constant. No manual entry is required, saving numerous keystrokes!

• Ctrl + ; inserts the current date into Excel.
• Ctrl + Shift + ; inserts the current time into Excel.
• Unfortunately, no shortcut exists to combine the two, so the current date shortcut must be used first, followed by the current time shortcut.

Simple arithmetic with dates

Once dates and times are inserted into an Excel workbook, arithmetic can be performed on those cells using common operators, such as addition or subtraction. This works great if you have a date inserted into Excel and need to count back a set number of days, or store a value showing an upcoming date a set number of days in the future.

To perform math operations on a cell

1. In the cell you want the new value to be stored in, type an “=“ sign.
2. Click on the cell that you wish to perform the math operation on. Excel will insert the cell address (e.g. A2). (Alternately, you may type in the cell addresses manually.)
3. Insert the operator you wish to use (“+” or “-”), followed by the number of days of separation.
4. Press the “Enter” key and the resulting value will be calculated.

To determine the number of days between two dates

1. In the cell you want the new value to be stored in, type an “=“ sign.
2. Click on the cell with the most recent date that you wish to perform the math operation on. Excel will insert the cell address (e.g. A2). (Alternately, you may type in the cell addresses manually.)
3. Insert the subtraction operator (“-”), followed by the cell with the earliest date.
4. Press the “Enter” key.
5. If you need to convert this value to a number, click on the Home tab and change the drop-down in the “Number” grouping to “General.”