Excel: Use NOW Function to Return Date Only

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By default, the NOW function in Excel returns the current date and time.

However, you can use the following syntax to only return the date:

=INT(NOW())

You can then format the cell as a Short Date to only display the date.

Note that an even easier way to only display the current date is to use the TODAY function:

=TODAY()

The following example shows how to use each of these formulas in practice.

Example: Use NOW Function to Return Date Only in Excel

Suppose we type the following formula into cell A1 to display the current date and time:

=NOW()

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

By default, the NOW function returns the current date and time.

Note: The NOW function returns the date and time that this article was written on.

We could instead type the following formula into cell A1 to return only the date:

=INT(NOW())

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

With cell A1 selected, we can then click the Number Format dropdown menu from the Number group on the Home tab along the top ribbon, and choose Short Date:

Cell A1 will now only display the date:

Note that we could also type the following formula into cell A1 to return only the current date:

=TODAY()

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

The TODAY function returns the current date.

Note that this date matches the date returned using the INT(NOW()) formula.