Data entry in Excel can be tedious enough. You are updating your Excel table with the time and date of your most recent call to a customer, you want to be fast and not type the date and time manually.

Instead, insert today’s date or the current time in Excel, using a shortcut.

Insert current time and date with a keyboard shortcut

In a cell, press

CTRL+ ; (semicolon) to insert the current date

CTRL + : (colon) to insert the current time

Insert the current date or time inside text too

It works inside text too!

While I have been using this for many years, only recently and by accident did I discover that I could use the shortcut to insert the date/time anywhere inside some other text. Handy, eh?

e.g., in a cell type “This report was updated on ” then press CTRL + ;

Prefer to use a function? TODAY and NOW functions

You may already use =Today() and =Now() to always display the current date and time in a workbook. These however will refresh every day/time the workbook is saved.

Go on, try it.