Access tip:

Display current date & time in column of any width

The worksheet function =NOW() returns the current date & time. When entered into a column which is not wide enough to display the value NOW returns, the cell displays ###’s.

You could widen the column to make the date and time show, but sometimes this is not convenient: the column may already be exactly the width you want to accommodate all entries in cells further below. Maybe you don’t want to push any other columns any further to the right, because you won’t be able to see the column contents on one screen, or because it forces you to change the print settings.

The solution is to use the TEXT function to convert the value returned by NOW to text: text (as opposed to a value) stretches into the next column rather than returning ###’s. The TEXT function has two arguments: 1. the value to convert to text; 2. what format to show it in. Use custom number codes in double quote marks to specify the format. For example =TEXT(NOW(),”ddd dd/mm/yy hh:mm”) will return date and time using the format FRI 09/04/04 11:24.

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