Dates and times are important, especially when you enter your datasets and analysis.
Google Sheets offers multiple functions to manage them properly.
Regardless if it’s today’s date or handling other calculations like date differences and time zones, learning these functions can help with your productivity and extract essential insights from your data.
Basic Date Functions
In Google Sheets, you can access date and time functions from the toolbar or by typing directly into the cell.
Just start typing a function name preceded by an equal sign, and Google Sheets will provide suggestions.
Using the commands =TODAY(), =NOW(), and =DATE() to retrieve current dates or specific dates.
Basic Time Functions
Just like the date function, the time function is quite similar to it.
All you have to do is to use the commands: =TIME(HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND).
Intermediate Date and Time Functions
Intermediate date and time functions in Google Sheets help analyze time-based data more effectively.
They include functions to extract specific components like month or year from dates, calculate time differences, and aggregate data by time periods.
By using the functions =MONTH(CELL) and =YEAR(CELL), this extracts the month and year of the cell.
An example would be down below.
By totaling your data, using the function =SUMIFS.
Using the example below, the function was used by using the function =SUMIFS(C:C, D:D, 1).
Video Tutorial
Conclusion
Learning these functions lets you do a lot more with dates, do calculations, and understand your data better.
Just like any skill, experimentation, and practice are needed– making mistakes is part of the learning process.
As you use them more, you’ll get better.
Give it a go and have fun with your spreadsheets!
