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The Excel NOW function returns the current date and time. The function has no arguments and therefore, the format of the function is:



The NOW function updates every time your Excel worksheet is refreshed, and so any cells containing the function will be continually changing.

Example

The following example shows use of the NOW function, combined with the IF function, to highlight when an appointment is due. The function format is shown in the first spreadsheet and the results at 2 different times are shown in the two spreadsheets underneath.


In the above example, the current time (returned by the NOW function) is subtracted from the appointment time and the result is compared against 1 hour (=1/24 - see the page on Excel Dates & Times for an explanation of this). If the current time is less than 1 hour from the appointment time, the alert is shown; otherwise no text is shown in cell B2. The contents of cell B2 have also been formatted to have red bold text, to make the alert stand out more.

Note that the above alert formula could be made more sophisticated by adding more conditions to the IF function to highlight when the appointment time has been passed, etc. Note also, that the above appointment alert will only work if your spreadsheet is being continually updated. While the spreadsheet is unused, the contents of cell B2 will stay the same as at the last evaluation.