Today and Now for Live Dates

Before we make a cell show today's date, it helps to know a secret: spreadsheets store dates as numbers. Each day is counted from a starting point. In Excel and Google Sheets, the number 1 means a fixed first day, and every later day adds one.

That is why you can subtract two dates to count days. The pretty MM/DD/YYYY you see on screen is just formatting laid over a plain number.

In this lesson you will learn two functions that ask the spreadsheet for the current moment: TODAY() and NOW().

The TODAY() function returns the current date with no time attached. It takes no arguments at all, which is why the parentheses are empty.

Type it into any cell and press Enter. The cell fills with today's calendar date, formatted as a date automatically.

Because it has no inputs, you must still include the empty (). Writing just =TODAY would be treated as a name, not a function call.