How to get current date and time with milliseconds in Excel?
As you may learned in other tutorials, you might know that you can press Ctrl + ; (semicolon) to get the current date, and press Ctrl + Shift + ; (semicolon) to get the current time in Excel. However, the date and time have to be in two cells, and the time you get with the method only contains hours and minutes, which means that the seconds will always be zero.
In this tutorial, we will talk about how to have the date and time in one cell, and display milliseconds in the date and time as well. Please read on to find out how.
Get current date and time with milliseconds with NOW function
To insert the current date and time with milliseconds, you can use NOW function as shown below:
1. Select the cells in which you will enter the current time with milliseconds, and then press Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog.
2. In the Format Cells dialog, on the Number tab, click on Custom, enter m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss.000 in the Type box, and click OK to close the dialog.
3. Enter the formula below in a cell, then double click on the result cell, and press F9 to insert the current time.
=NOW()
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Get current date and time with milliseconds by clicking on a button
If you need to get the date and time at a particular moment when a specific action is made, say, clicking on a button. The following macro will do the trick nicely:
1. Press the Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.
2. Click Insert > Module. Then copy and paste the following VBA code to the Module window.
VBA code: Quickly insert date and timestamp in Excel
Sub TimeStampEO()
'Update by ExtendOffice
Selection.NumberFormatLocal = "m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss.000"
ActiveCell.Value = Format(Now, "m/d/yyyy h:mm:ss") & Right(Format(Timer, "0.000"), 4)
End Sub
3. Go back to your worksheet. Click on Insert > Shapes, and then insert a shape you like in the worksheet.
4. Double-click on the shape you just inserted to add text, say, Date and timestamp, to the shape. If you want, you can change the shape style or text style.
5. Right click on the shape, and select Assign Macro on the drop-down menu.
6. In the pop-up Assign Macro dialog box, select TimeStampEO in the Macro name list, and select This Workbook in the Macros in drop-down list, and then click on OK.
7. Now, you just need to select a cell in which you will insert the current date and time with milliseconds, and then click on the shape. The date and time will be inserted at once.
- If you already have times in a worksheet, and want to convert them to the times with milliseconds, you just need to press Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog and do as the first method described.
- Excel does not support formatting times with nanoseconds or microseconds, if you need to have time display nanoseconds or microseconds, you should format the time to text and then enter the time with nanoseconds or microseconds.
Get current date and time with milliseconds by clicking on a button
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