If you need to enter the current date and time in a cell within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, here’s a simple way to do it without using up a bunch of your valuable time inputting pesky keystrokes. (FYI: I’m using MS Excel 2010 on a PC; other versions and a Mac may differ slightly, but you should be able to get this done in any version following the steps below.)
First, make sure your cursor is in the cell that you want the date to appear in. Then press and hold the Control key and the semi-colon key at the same time. The current date will appear in the cell.
If you also want the current time to appear, that’s easy, too. First type a space after the date you just entered, and then press and hold the Control key, the Shift key, and the semi-colon key all at once. The time will appear after the date you just inserted.
As you might be able to guess, you could use either of these shortcuts by themselves to enter just the date or just the time.
Now what if you want the date to be formatted differently? Maybe you want the day of the week to be shown, the month spelled out, or AM/PM after the time.
First, be sure the cell you want to format is selected. Then go to the Format Menu, toward the far right of your Excel menu bar.
Click on Format to bring up the sub-menu. Choose Format Cells from the bottom of the list.
In the dialog box that comes up, make sure the Number tab is selected. Date should be highlighted, because the cell that you have selected already has a date format.
For a simple pre-formatted date and time, choose one of the options from the list in the ‘Type:’ box. Watch the ‘Sample’ box above it to see the effect of the different choices.
When you are done, click OK, and you’ll be back in your spreadsheet with your newly formatted date and time.
If you want to get a little fancier, you can go back to the Format menu and choose Custom from the Category list (where Date was pre-selected before). This will call up a box of all kinds of mysterious symbols for you to choose from. You don’t need to know what they all stand for right now (wait for a future post on that…), but scroll down and select a few to see what results they produce in the ‘Sample’ box.
Click OK to return to your spreadsheet and see the effect.
Happy spreadsheeting, and let me know if you have any questions in the comments!
