Using the TODAY function in Excel
- Excel Navigator
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
There may be times when you need part of a spreadsheet to always show the current days date.
This could be to track deadlines, calculate age, work out when a payment is due or automating date entries.
If this is something you need in your spreadsheet you don’t need to manually change the date every day that you open the file, you can use the TODAY function to achieve this.
TODAY can also be nested into other date functions to create dynamic date calculations and outputs that will always show the most relevant date.
Download File
If you would like to follow along download the attachment below.
NOTE: All examples in this blog will show the date 17/08/2025, the day this blog was written. If you use the TODAY function in the examples in the download the output of the function will be the day that you attempt the exercises and will not match any of the examples in this blog.
What is the TODAY function?
The TODAY function returns the current date based on your systems clock. It updates automatically every time the date on your systems clock changes.
The function is easy to use and does not require any parameters to be entered.
The syntax is:
=TODAY()
NOTE: All examples in blog were done on 17/08/2025 so will show that day. At midnight the date displayed will change to the following day each time.
Understanding how dates work in Excel
Dates in Excel use a serial number, where number 1 is January 1st 1900, and all other dates count up from that day.
So the serial number for 09/08/2025 is 45878 because it is that many days since 01/01/1900.
It is important to understand this because when using date functions you may sometimes see the serial number instead of the date depending on how the cell is formatted.
If you do see a serial number you can change the format to a date value by using the number format drop down on the Home tab and selecting Short Date.
To learn more about how dates work in Excel click here.
Using TODAY to calculate the current days date
To use the TODAY function just type:
=TODAY().
As there are no parameters to enter for the TODAY function, the value between the brackets can be left blank and the output will be the current date based on your systems clock.
The output of TODAY can be used in calculations with other cells.
An example of this could be seeing how many days until an invoice is due by subtracting the invoice due date from today's date.
In the example above cell B2 has the TODAY function in it and C2 is subtracting it from an invoice due date.
Every day Excel will automatically update TODAY and the value in C2 will change automatically. When todays date is greater than the invoice due date the value in C2 will become negative, indicating the invoice is overdue.
Nesting TODAY in other functions
On its own TODAY just generates a single date value.
Combining it with other date functions in Excel can give you dynamic outputs that change in real time each day showing you the most relevant date information.
Using TODAY with DAY, MONTH and YEAR to get components of today’s date
To learn more about the DAY, MONTH and YEAR click here.
The DAY, MONTH and YEAR functions show the serial number for each component, so if you had the date 17/08/2025 you would see:
DAY would show 17 for the 17th day of the month
MONTH would show 8 for August, the 8th month of the year
YEAR would show 2025 for the year part of a date.
These can all be combined with the TODAY function to dynamically update the day, month and year data each day.
Based on the example above the next day the file was opened the DAY function would show 18.
Use TODAY with EDATE to get a specific number of months before or after today’s date
To learn more about EDATE click here.
The EDATE function shows a date that is a specified number of months before or after a given start date, where the start date could be TODAY.
So if you had a start date of 17/08/2025, two months in the future would be 17/10/2025, and two months in the past would be 17/06/2025.
If the start date was the TODAY function then every day that you opened your file the output would update.
Use TODAY with EOMONTH to get the last day of a month before or after today’s date
To learn more about EOMONTH click here.
The EOMONTH function shows the last day of a month a specified number of months before or after a given start date, where the start date could be TODAY.
So if you had a start date of 17/08/2025, the last day of the month two months in the future would be 31/10/2025, and the last day of the month two months in the past would be 30/06/2025.
When combined with TODAY each time the current date changes to a new month the EOMONTH will update.
Use TODAY with WORKDAY to find the working day a specific number of days before or after today’s date
To learn more about WORKDAY click here.
The WORKDAY function returns a date that is a specified number of working days before or after a start date, where the start date could be the TODAY function.
As a default in Excel if you add a number of days to a date it will include weekends in the calculation.
So if you added 14 to 17/08/2025 the output would be 31/08/2025, which is a Sunday, and includes weekend between the two dates.
To find the date 14 working days ahead of 17/08/2025 you could use the WORKDAY function which would exclude weekends from the calculation and return 04/09/2025 which is a Thursday.
This would also work if you wanted to find a working day prior to the current day.
Use TODAY with NETWORKDAYS to find the number of working days between today’s date and another date
To learn more about NETWORKDAYS click here.
The NETWORKDAYS function shows the number of working days between two dates.
The start and the end dates in the NETWORKDAYS function can be other date functions, including the TODAY function.
If you wanted to always know the number of working days left in a month the TODAY function could be used as a start date, and the EOMONTH function with TODAY nested in it could be used as the end date.
This way you would always be able to see the number of days remaining in a month without ever having to change the values in the NETWORKDAYS function.
Conclusion
On its own TODAY can be useful for always displaying the current days date based on the systems clock.
When combined with other date functions it can allow for dynamic outputs which update each day the file is opened.
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