APRIL 2020 PCWorld 121individuals who always forgets
to date your work.
- Enter the following
formula in cell A1: =TODAY()
and press Enter. - Next, type over that
function in A1 with =NOW().
IMPORTANT NOTE: Why
type over? In order for these
two formulas to work properly,
they must be entered in the
Home cell, that is, A1,
otherwise, they won’t update
automatically when the
spreadsheet recalculates. Press
Shift-F9 to calculate/
recalculate the active
spreadsheet only, or press F9
for the entire workbook.
After you enter one of these functions in
A1, you can then reformat the Date and Time
or use the system default. The default format
for the TODAY function is 8/29/18, and the
default for NOW is 8/29/18 21:57. If these
don’t work for you, change them. - Position your cursor on the Date or
Time you want changed and choose Home
Format > Format Cells.
- In the Format Cells dialog window,
choose Date (or Time) from the Category
panel under the Number tab. - Scroll through the list of Date/Time
formats in the Type dialog pane and select
the format that best fits your project. - SUM FUNCTIONS
Probably the most frequently used function
in Excel (or any other spreadsheet program),
=SUM does just that: It sums a column, row,
or range of numbers—but it doesn’t just
sum. It also subtracts, multiplies, divides,
and uses any of the comparison operators to
return a result of 1 (true) or 0 (false).
You can also get the same results just
using the plus (+) sign in place of the
function SUM. For example, both of these
formulas produce the same answer:
=SUM(J79) and =+(J79). In the
spreadsheet graphic, notice that cells E3
through E8 use the SUM function, while cells
E9 through E14 use the plus (+) sign and the
Date and Time
functions and formats.