NOW

Return the current moment as a date with a time fraction attached.

Syntax

NOW()

Examples

Every example below was executed against VisiGrid engine 0.35.0 — not transcribed from another vendor's documentation. Reproduce any of them with vgrid calc.

Formula	Result	Notes
`=ISNUMBER(NOW())`	`TRUE`
`=INT(NOW())=TODAY()`	`TRUE`	The whole part is the date; INT throws away the clock.
`=NOW()>=TODAY()`	`TRUE`	NOW is today plus a fraction of a day.
`=HOUR(NOW())>=0`	`TRUE`

NOW is TODAY plus a fraction

One number carries both. The whole part is the date, the fraction is the time — 0.5 is midday, because midday is half a day in.

=INT(NOW())       → today's date, time discarded
=NOW()-TODAY()    → the time alone, as a fraction of a day
=(NOW()-TODAY())*24  → hours elapsed since midnight

That is why TODAY and NOW are not interchangeable. A cell holding NOW() compared against one holding TODAY() will not be equal, even on the same day, because one has a clock on it.

The comparison that catches people

Testing NOW() = TODAY() is false for all but one instant of the day. If you mean “is this today”, strip the time first:

=IF(INT(A1)=TODAY(), "today", "not today")

Why these examples assert shapes

NOW() returns a different number every time it runs, so a published result would be wrong before you finished reading it. The examples check properties that hold at any moment instead — and the build executes them like all the others. See TODAY for more on that.

Two of the obvious properties are deliberately not asserted here: NOW() > TODAY() and NOW() <> INT(NOW()) are both false at exactly midnight. True almost always is not the same as true, and a build that fails once a year at 00:00:00 is worse than one that checks something weaker.

Excel compatibility

Matches Excel. Returns a date serial with the time as its fractional part.