Today’s date formula

I use =NOW() to update today’s date in a spreadsheet. The problem is that it includes a fraction for the time of day. How can I get just the date without the associated fraction?

By Neale Blackwood

Excel treats dates as numbers, and the time of day is treated as a fraction of the day’s number. The NOW function returns the day with a fraction for the time. The TODAY function returns just the date with no fraction and is the solution to your problem.

Should you wish to remove a fraction from a number, you can use the TRUNC function. This is short for truncate; it will cut off any fractions. So=TUNC(NOW()) will give same result as =TODAY(),which is today’s date with no fraction. TRUNC has an option to Truncate after a specified number of decimal places, similar to ROUND.

For Example:

=TRUNC(1.99,1)

will give you 1.9

=TRUNC(1992,-2)

will give 1900

When you don’t specify the number of decimal places it defaults to zero.