How to quickly enter dates in Excel

Manually entering the date and month in Excel will waste your time and reduce work efficiency.

1. Quickly enter dates in Excel with the Excel Date Picker utility

Step 1: You download the utility to your device by following the link http://samradapps.com/datepicker/

Next, you click on Download now to download and extract to file samradapps_datepicker.xlam.

Step 2: On Excel, you open the menu File.

Next, you click Options.

Step 3: You choose Add-ins (first) => Go (2).

Step 4: After the window Add-ins appears, click on Browse to find the path to the file containing Add-ins just downloaded.

Next, select the extracted Add-ins file (first) => OK (2).

Step 5: You click on OK to finish inserting this utility in Excel.

– You notice the item Home tool will appear Date Picker as shown below:

Step 6: To insert the date and month quickly, move to the cell you want to insert (first) => click on Date Picker (2) => select the date to insert (3).

After the operation is complete, you will see the date inserted quickly in Excel’s format.

2. Quick change of date and month format in Number

2.1. Convert date and time format quickly

In the section Number on the menu Home there will be time format fine-tuning features like Short Date, Long Date, Time. This feature will help you quickly convert the date format based on the entered information. Please follow the example below:

Step 1: You fill in a date form in the Excel cell (first) with the format dd/mm/yyyy or dd-mm-yyyy and Excel will automatically recognize it as a date format. Next, you click on the box Date (2) in the item Number.

Step 2: You choose according to templates like Short Date (short format day, month), Long Date (full date and month format) and Time (hour, minute format). If you want to insert the full date and time format, instead of filling in the full content, you just need to fill it in a short form (d/m/yy or dm-yy) and switch to Long Date is to be.

Step 3: In case you convert to another format but the value in the cell is ##### characters, move your mouse in the space between the two columns and stretch the cell in Excel.

After extending the space in the cell, you will see the full displayed value as shown below:

2.2 Use custom Custom Format to quickly format dates

Step 1: Click on the cell you want to format the date in (first).Next, you choose menu Home (2) => click and arrow Number Format (3).

Step 2: Windows Format Cells appear. You click on the item Custom (first) => Select desired date format (2) => OK (3).

– Whether you enter a date such as 19-09-2019 or 09-19-2019, the date will automatically return as formatted dd/mm/yyyy (day/month/year) ie 19/09/ 2019.

3. Enter the current day and month quickly with a function or shortcut

3.1. Using the Today . function

To quickly enter the current day and month, enter the function =TODAY() and press Enter.

After entering, the date and month will be displayed and inserted into the selected cell.

3.2. Use keyboard shortcuts

You can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly insert the current date like the example below:

– Press the key combination Ctrl + ; (first) to insert current date in d/m/yyyy format.

– Press the key combination Ctrl + Shift + ; (2) to insert current time with format hh:mm.

– Press key combinations in order Ctrl + ; => key SPACE => Ctrl + Shift + ; (3) to insert the date, month in the format d/m/yyyy hh:mm.

4. Enter days and months quickly in Excel with the Text to Columns feature

Step 1: You create a simple date column in the form of numbers as shown below. Next, you highlight all the values that need to be converted to date format (first) => Data (2) => Text to Columns (3).