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The TODAY and NOW functions are designed to return today's date or date/time as Excel serial date numbers. These two functions are heavily used in date calculations and also in the Data Validation and Conditional Formatting features.
The TODAY and NOW functions are computer programs that you run from a worksheet cell formula. They simply return the date or date/time as an Excel serial number. You run these functions by typing their names in a formula followed by a set of ()'s. These two functions are heavily used in date calculations being nested in other functions and also in the Data Validation and Conditional Formatting features. The NOW function does not update continuously but every time the formula that contains it is recalculated.
Whenever you type a formula in a worksheet cell, this is called syntax or grammar. The general function syntax for these functions has a format like these when you type them in a worksheet cell:
= TODAY( )
= NOW( )
There are no argument lists for these functions so they are typed in exactly as shown above.
The worksheet seen below contains some typical worksheet formulas that run the TODAY and NOW worksheet functions. Pay close attention to the argument list and the syntax used to write the formula.
A | B | C | |
1 | =DAY( EOMONTH( TODAY( ), 0 ) ) | The formula uses the TODAY function to return the current date as a serial number that the EOMONTH function then uses to calculate the ending date of the month as a serial number that the DAY function then uses to calculate the day as a number. So in other words, the end day of the month was just figured out | |
2 | |||
3 | =Today()-14 | Figure out data 14 days in the past. Quite common formula to use with Data Validation feature | |
4 | |||
5 |
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