You don't have to worry about Microsoft's expensive Office 365 subscription fees, as Google offers a free alternative, Google Sheets. Just like Excel, there are tons of features waiting to be discovered. When we were compiling a daily report, we found several ways to automatically add dates to a Google Sheets document.
There are three ways to add dates to: Google Sheets These methods include autofilling cells, using the date function, formatting cells, or entering a date abbreviation. We demonstrated these methods using a web browser on a Windows computer, but they also work on Mac, iPhone, and Android devices.
Using these methods, you can automate some repetitive tasks involving adding dates to cells and improve your efficiency. Let's explore them all.
Tip: Date and time formats depend on the default language for Google Sheets. Here's how to change them: Open Google Sheets > Go to File > Settings. In the pop-up window, go to the General tab > Select your region from the Locale drop-down menu.
1. Automatically enter the current date in Google Sheets
Let's start by automatically entering today's date using the Google Sheets date function called TODAY(). This returns today's date in a cell. Here's how to use it.
Step 1: Open Google Sheets Place the cursor in a cell, and type Occupation below.
= TODAY ()
Step 2: Now, press the key. Input.
There you go. You can now see today's date in a cell on Google Sheets.
Alternatively, you can also use the key combination. “Ctrl +;” In a cell in Google Sheets and it will display the current date.
Next, let's take a look at how to automatically enter dates in chronological order in Google Sheets.
2. How to autofill dates in Google Sheets
Autofill is a feature in Google Sheets that helps you fill cells in a series with data based on values in a few cells. For example, if I enter a date in cell A1, I can fill the entire column A with dates. Google Sheets recognizes that there is a date in A1, and when it asks you to autofill the rest of the column, it fills it in increasing order of dates.
However, if you want to check the date and time format before entering the date, here's how to do it.
We can autofill days, weeks, and months in Google Sheets. Let's see how.
1. Autofill days in a column in Google Sheets
Step 1: Open Google Sheets Enter a date in a cell.
Step 2: Click and hold lower right corner to the cell and drag it down to the cell you want to autofill dates for.
As you can see, the dates are automatically filled for all selected cells in a column with the same format.
This is how you can autofill consecutive days in Google Sheets. Next, let's see how to autofill dates that are a week apart.
2. Autofill weeks in a column in Google Sheets
Here's how to autofill dates in a Google Sheets column that are a week apart.
Step 1: Open a Google spreadsheet and enter two dates one week apart in consecutive cells.
Step 2: Locate cells And mark it.
Step 3: Click lower right corner For highlighted cells, drag it until you reach the cell you want to autofill.
As you can see, the column is filled with dates that are one week apart.
Similarly, we can autofill dates in a column that are one month apart. Here's how.
3. Autofill months in a column in Google Sheets
Step 1: Open Google Sheets and enter two dates one month apart in consecutive cells in the column.
Step 2: Locate cells And mark it.
Step 3: Click lower right corner For highlighted cells, drag it until you reach the cell you want to autofill.
The column is automatically populated with dates that are a few months apart.
Next, let's take a look at how to enter only the days of the week in Google Sheets.
3. Automate weekdays only on Google Sheets
If you use Google Sheets for work, you rarely need to enter data for a holiday or weekend. However, the previous method of autofilling dates also automatically filled in weekends. If you're working with a spreadsheet full of data, manually deleting weekends can be time-consuming.
So, you can automatically fill in dates excluding weekends—Saturdays and Sundays. Here's how.
Step 1: Open Google Sheets and enter History In the cell you want to start with.
Step 2: Enter formula In the cell below. Make sure you enter the correct column into the formula. (Column A in our case)
=WORKDAY.INTL($A$2, row(A1),1)
Step 3: The next cell is automatically populated with the working day. next one.
Step 4: Click the lower-right corner of the cell and drag it down to the cell you want to fill. The formula controls the form, and will include only working days and exclude Saturdays and Sundays.
As you can see in the image below, the cells contain only working days, Saturdays and Sundays are excluded.
That's all you need to know about how to autofill dates in Google Sheets. If you're looking for a way to modify and change the date format in Google Sheets, check out our recently published article.
Next, let's see how we can combine dates and times in Google Sheets. This will be useful if you have two columns: one for the date and one for the time.
Bonus: Merge History and Timeline on Google Sheets
When you have a column with a date and time that corresponds to a corresponding column, it makes sense to combine them into a single column and reduce duplication. Here's how.
Step 1: Open Google Sheets and enter the formula below that helps you combine Google Sheets date and time functions into text.
Make sure you enter the correct cell locations for the date and time, respectively. In our case, A2 and B2.
=TEXT(A2,"m/dd/yy")&TEXT(B2,"hh:mm:ss")
Step 2: As you can see, it is done. Merge The date and time in a single cell as plain text. You can select and drag merged cells to automatically fill the entire column if you have multiple separate date and time cells.
That's all you need to know about autofilling dates in Google Sheets. However, if you have any further questions, you can check out the FAQ section below.
Questions and answers about automatically taking dates in Google Sheets
Q1. Can you autofill dates in multiple formats in Google Sheets?
The answer: You can autofill dates in only one format.
Q2. Can you autofill dates that are one year apart from each other in Google Sheets?
The answer: Yes. Enter two dates one year apart, then select and drag the cells down to autofill.
Get your appointments organized
We hope this article helped you easily add dates automatically to Google Sheets. Features like this have saved us a lot of time and greatly increased our spreadsheet efficiency. Therefore, we couldn't help but share it with you. Similarly, you can also explore another article that helped us do the same: A Guide to Using Conditional Formatting in Google Sheets
