1 00:00:01,760 --> 00:00:05,180 Let's take a look at inputting dates and time stamps in Excel. 2 00:00:05,240 --> 00:00:11,850 The way you input dates depend on your regional settings. That decides if you input month first or day 3 00:00:11,850 --> 00:00:12,350 first. 4 00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:19,490 So right here in cell B3, let's type in "1/2/2019" 5 00:00:19,490 --> 00:00:23,720 Keep your eye on the format in this box right here. 6 00:00:23,780 --> 00:00:27,490 I'm going to press control+enter to stay in the same cell. 7 00:00:27,560 --> 00:00:32,240 What happened? That automatically changed to the date format. 8 00:00:32,270 --> 00:00:39,020 This is a good sign because it means Excel has recognized what I input as a date. The other way you can 9 00:00:39,020 --> 00:00:44,330 recognize this is that Excel automatically right aligned this date. 10 00:00:44,330 --> 00:00:48,660 This means that it recognized it as a number because that's how Excel remembers dates. 11 00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:54,170 And we're gonna be digging deeper on this topic in a future lecture in another section. 12 00:00:54,610 --> 00:00:57,820 But here's the question what type of date is this? 13 00:00:57,830 --> 00:01:01,620 Is this the second of January or the first of February. 14 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:07,020 That's what's taken by your regional Windows settings and we can check that here as well. 15 00:01:07,100 --> 00:01:14,180 If we just right mouse click on the cell and go to format cells. We automatically come to the date options 16 00:01:14,180 --> 00:01:17,360 here because Excel has already recognized this as a date. 17 00:01:17,510 --> 00:01:24,770 And down here I can see that my locale is set to English U.S. Which means in my case the first digit is 18 00:01:24,770 --> 00:01:27,830 the month and the second one is the day. 19 00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:34,400 I can also choose another type of date format. If I just click on this one because I want to see the 20 00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:40,240 month as three letters I'm going to click on okay and that's going to be reflected in the cell. 21 00:01:40,310 --> 00:01:46,630 In addition to the other options I had here I have two date options directly from this dropdown. 22 00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:52,340 One is the short date which was the way I input at the beginning and I also have the option for the 23 00:01:52,400 --> 00:01:55,780 long date. Which brings in the day of the week as well. 24 00:01:55,790 --> 00:02:04,410 Now if you happen to see something like this that means your cell is too small to show what's inside. 25 00:02:04,490 --> 00:02:07,030 So you just have to increase the size of the cell. 26 00:02:07,070 --> 00:02:13,190 We're just double click this to make it fit. Let's switch this back to short date. 27 00:02:13,190 --> 00:02:19,190 One thing to note is that you don't necessarily need to type in the entire year, so it's enough to type 28 00:02:19,190 --> 00:02:25,720 in 19 and press enter. Excel automatically converts this to 2019. 29 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:33,260 The rule is this, anything between zero to twenty nine is seen as this century and thirty to ninety nine 30 00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:35,190 is seen as the last century. 31 00:02:35,210 --> 00:02:42,070 So if you want to type a date before the 1st of January 1930 you need to type the four digit year. 32 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:42,770 One shortcut 33 00:02:42,770 --> 00:02:51,200 I often use when I work with dates is the Ctrl and the pound key or the hash sign. That automatically 34 00:02:51,200 --> 00:02:57,620 applies this date format which makes the date easier to read. Especially if you're sharing files with 35 00:02:57,620 --> 00:03:03,080 people from other countries and it's not always clear which one is the day, which one is the month, you 36 00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:09,110 can switch to this format and you can do it really fast using the shortcut key Ctrl and the pound 37 00:03:09,140 --> 00:03:09,800 key. 38 00:03:10,040 --> 00:03:15,680 You might come across situations where you need to add a timestamp to your work. Let's say you're 39 00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:21,470 reviewing your report or you've just input some data and you immediately want to input today's date. 40 00:03:21,830 --> 00:03:28,850 Of course you can type it in but there is a great shortcut key for it and that's Ctrl and the semicolon 41 00:03:29,390 --> 00:03:30,670 and press enter. 42 00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:33,810 Now you might need to press Ctrl+shift+semicolon 43 00:03:33,920 --> 00:03:40,340 if Ctrl and semicolon doesn't work for you. What if you want to have the date and the time? You can 44 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:51,470 use Ctrl+semicolon then add a space and then Ctrl+shift+semicolon. Or Ctrl+shift+Colon 45 00:03:51,470 --> 00:03:59,720 if Ctrl+shift+semicolon doesn't work for you. And press enter. These are static so they're great for timestamps. 46 00:03:59,720 --> 00:04:05,960 Okay so that's the basics for inputting dates and timestamps in Excel. In a future lecture we're going to 47 00:04:05,960 --> 00:04:11,420 be dealing with making calculations with dates and as well as times. 48 00:04:11,420 --> 00:04:17,450 So for example if you need to create a time sheet where you input your start time and your end time 49 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:21,880 and you want to calculate the hours worked that can be quite tricky in Excel. 50 00:04:21,890 --> 00:04:24,700 So we're gonna be covering that in a future section.