Excel TODAY function to insert today's date and more

4 things you should know about TODAY in Excel

1. TODAY() is a volatile function, which means that it updates itself continuously every time a worksheet is opened or changed.
2. If a TODAY formula does not update automatically, most likely automatic recalculation is turned off in your workbook. To turn it on again, go to the Formulas tab > Calculation Options, and select Automatic.
3. To enter today's date in Excel as a static unchangeable value, use these keyboard shortcuts.
4. If you want to insert current date and time, use the NOW function instead of TODAY.

Excel formula for today's date

The value returned by the TODAY function updates automatically, so the below formula is useful if you want the worksheet to always display the current date, regardless of when you open it.

=TODAY()

To clarify what kind of date that is, you can concatenate TODAY() with some explanatory text, for example:

=CONCATENATE("Today is ",TEXT(TODAY(), "mmmm dd, yyyy"))

Because in the internal Excel system dates and times are stored as numbers, concatenating text with the TODAY() formula directly would result in a meaningless string like "Today is 42965". To avoid this, we nest Excel's TODAY function within the TEXT function to display the date in the desired format.

Shortcuts to get today's date in Excel

The inset today's date as an unchangeable timestamp that won't automatically update the next day, use one of the following keyboard shortcuts:

• To inset today's date: Ctrl + ;
• To insert the current time: Ctrl + Shift + ;
• To enter the current date and time: Ctrl + ; then Space and then Ctrl + Shift + ;

Add or subtract days to/from today's date

To add or subtract a specific number of days to/from the current date, use a simple arithmetic operation of addition or subtraction, respectively.

For example, to add 7 days to todays' date, use this formula:

=TODAY()+7

To subtract 7 days from the current date, go with this one:

=TODAY()-7

To exclude weekends (Saturday and Sunday) from your calculations, nest the TODAY function within WORKDAY that deals with weekdays only:

To add 7 workdays to today's date:

=WORKDAY(TODAY(), 7)

To subtract 7 workdays from today's date:

=WORKDAY(TODAY(), -7)

The following screenshot shows the results:

Get the number of days before or after a certain date

To calculate how many days are left before some data, subtract today's date from the future date you are counting toward:

The date can be supplied directly to a formula in the format that Excel can understand, or by using the DATE function, or as a reference to the cell containing the date.

For example, to find out how many days are left till December 31, 2017, use one of these formulas:

=A2-TODAY()

=DATE(2017,12,31)-TODAY()

="12/31/2017"-TODAY()

All three formulas tell us that at the moment of writing (August 17, 2017), 136 days were left till the end of the year 2017:

To calculate the number of days since a certain date, subtract the past date from today's date:

For example, to find out how many days have passed since January 1, 2017, use one of these formulas:

=TODAY()-A2

=TODAY()-DATE(2017,1,1)

=TODAY()-"1/1/2017"

Calculate months since or before a certain date

To get the number of months between today and a past date, use the DATEDIF(start_date, end_date, unit) function with the past date in the start_date argument, TODAY() as end_date and "m" unit denoting months:

To get the number of months between today and a future date, swap the start_date and end_date arguments:

With the date of interest in cell A4, use the following formulas to calculate time difference in the number of complete months:

To calculate months since a certain date in the past:

=DATEDIF(A4,TODAY(),"m")

To calculate months before a certain date in the future:

=DATEDIF(TODAY(),A4,"m")

Calculate years since / before a certain date

The formulas to calculate years based on today's date are similar to the ones discussed in the above example. The difference is that you use "y" unit to get the number of complete years between today and another data:

To calculate years since a past date:

To calculate years before a future date:

Assuming the past/future date is in cell A4, you should be good with using these formulas:

The number of complete years since date:

=DATEDIF(A4,TODAY(),"y")

The number of complete years before date:

=DATEDIF(TODAY(),A4,"y")

For more information about the DATEDIF function, please see Excel DATEDIF - calculate difference between two dates.

Get age from birthdate

If you know someone's year of birth, you can subtract that year from the current year to find the person's age:

For example, if the person was born in 2000, you use the following formula to get his/her age:

=YEAR( TODAY())-2000

Or, you can enter the year of birth in a separate cell and reference that cell in your formula:

You can learn a few other age calculation formulas in this tutorial: How to get age from date of birth in Excel.

Find the nearest date to today

If you are curious to know which date in a list is closest to today's date, use one of the following array formulas to find it out.

How to highlight today's date in Excel

When working with a long list of dates or designing your own calendar in Excel, you may want to have the current date highlighted. To have it done, create a conditional formatting rule with this formula:

=B2=TODAY()

Where B2 is the left-top-most cell of the range to which the rule applies.

The result may look something similar to this:

The detailed steps to set up a conditional formatting rule can be found here: How to create a conditional formatting rule based on formula.