Using Dates

Dates can be extremely important in a spreadsheet, especially if you are entering research data in which the date is a variable or entering budget data. Even if you do not have these types of applications, it is nice to have dates appearing to show the "currency" of the data.

In the Basic Terms and Definitions (Missing File, Sorry) lesson, you learned about constant values and formulas. Most often a date would be a constant value, since it is something you type in. However, sometimes it is possible that a date is calculated from other dates.

To enter a date in Excel just position your cursor on a cell and type in a date in this format: MM/DD/YY, for example 11/20/96 or 9/3/96 or 01/03/95. You can type in leading zeros in a date or not; the program does not care. However, leading zeros will be dropped. If you just type in MM/DD, Excel will assume the current year.

Exercise 9

Go to cell F17 and type in the text: Data as of
Now go to cell H17 and type in the date: 10/10/96
Save this new version of PRACTICE.XLS.

Check your work.

If you always wanted to have the current date display when you open your spreadsheet file, you would type in this function: =TODAY() . Excel will display the computer's date based on the internal clock.

Learning Excel - Index