Chapter 12: Working with Dates and Times
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New Feature
Excel 2010 includes two new worksheet functions related to dates: NETWORKDAYS.INTL and WORKDAY.INTL.
These functions include an additional argument in which you can specify non-standard weekend days. If you
consider Saturday and Sunday to be non-working weekend days, the older versions of these functions will work
fine. n
Displaying the current date .....................................................................................
The following formula uses the TODAY function to display the current date in a cell:=TODAY()You can also display the date combined with text. The formula that follows, for example, displays
text, such as Today is Friday, April 9, 2010 :=”Today is “&TEXT(TODAY(),”dddd, mmmm d, yyyy”)It’s important to understand that the TODAY function is not a date stamp. The function is updated
whenever the worksheet is calculated. For example, if you enter either of the preceding formulas
into a worksheet, the formulas display the current date. And when you open the workbook tomor-
row, they will display the current date (not the date when you entered the formula).Tip
To enter a date stamp into a cell, press Ctrl+; (semicolon). This action enters the date directly into the cell and
does not use a formula. Therefore, the date will not change. n
Displaying any date .................................................................................................
You can easily enter a date into a cell by simply typing it while using any of the date formats that
Excel recognizes. You can also create a date by using the DATE function, which takes three argu-
ments: the year, the month, and the day. The following formula, for example, returns a date com-
prising the year in cell A1, the month in cell B1, and the day in cell C1:=DATE(A1,B1,C1)Note
The DATE function accepts invalid arguments and adjusts the result accordingly. For example, the following
formula uses 13 as the month argument and returns January 1, 2010. The month argument is automatically
translated as month 1 of the following year.
=DATE(2009,13,1)Often, you’ll use the DATE function with other functions as arguments. For example, the formula
that follows uses the YEAR and TODAY functions to return the date for the U.S. Independence Day
(July 4) of the current year:=DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),7,4)