Presentation of the functions

The functions TODAY and NOW are 2 functions extremely important. They allow you to create dynamic workbooks using the system date on your computer.

We will use these functions to create workbooks such as

• Automatic calendar
• Worker timesheet
• Follow-up of supplier payments
• Delivery delays
• ...

To view the current day, use the following formula

=TODAY()

To display the date and the time, you should use the following formula.

=NOW()

Remarks:

• Parentheses are compulsory even if the function doesn't expect any parameter.
• The cell is automatically formatted in date.

Why use a function instead of writing the date?

Yes, why use a function when it is easier to enter the date directly in a cell? And even better with the shortcut CTRL+ ; (control key + semicolon)

Unfortunately, this date will not change any more because it is written in hard copy.

While writing either TODAY or NOW, the date will automatically change day after day 😍😍😍

Exercise with the function TODAY

What is the point of using TODAY or NOW in a worksheet? This function is very useful for automatically calculating date gap, such as

• Birthday
• Payback period
• Invoicing delay

In the example, you have some customers who have not yet paid their bills 😡 The date in column C is empty.

So, in case the cell containing the payment dates is empty, we will use the current date.

We will first create a test if the date is empty or not. So here the result is TRUE or FALSE but we are going to change that.

=C5=""

If the date is empty (previous test = TRUE), then we will perform a subtraction between the current date, returns by TODAY, and the date of order.

=TODAY()-B5

Finally, we put these two elements in an IF function

=IF(C5="",TODAY()-B5,"")