Showing Created Date of Document

I am using Office 2016 on my Mac. I used to use LOTUS 123 back in the day..... lol lol lol

I have created a worked sheet template that shows created date and edited date.
am bit confused as to which formula I should use.
NOW or TODAY

initially I want the created date to be the one showing as date I created document
but edited date to change each time I open this document.
there are no columns to be added/calculated

can anyone help?

Administrative Note:

Welcome to the forum.

We would very much like to help you with your query, however the thread title does not really convey what your request is about.

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thanks for editing my original post. I could not find it else I would have done it myself. but now I see that is not optional. will be more careful in future...now that I know the rules.

in a template, can I not have the creation date automatically be entered when I open a new document?
I would rather NOT have to enter each time I create a new document.

I found this info online.... the cell with the NOW() formula does not auto update in real-time, only when the workbook is reopened
am I misunderstanding this statement?

so what is the difference between NOW and TODAY

Neither NOW() nor TODAY() will leave a permanent timestamp: both will recalculate when you open the workbook. If you want a creation data timestamp, simply type the creation date into a cell.

Excel isn't Word. Word is designed for the production of printed documents (letters, etc.), so being able to do that there makes sense. Excel is NOT designed for creating such documents. It's a spreadsheet for number crunching.

If you want a creation date when you start a new file, then you have two choices: either type it manually or add some VBA code to convert a cell containing =NOW() or =TODAY() to a text value when you save the file.

It might help to tell us what your goal is here: what are you using Excel for?

TODAY() vs NOW() - https://www.accountingweb.com/techno...day-versus-now

thank you for your prompt reply.

i decided to put all my data into Excel because I can separate it all by columns and then do a variety of sorting column contents....
not easily achieved in word and I don't even know if I created a table in word
whether that would achieve the same thing.

will just have to suck it up and enter creation date each time.

OK - so in Word you can create tables, and you can sort the tables on any of the columns. If your table needs to be wide, make the document landscape with narrow columns.

You will have nowhere near as much fine control over the printed output from Excel: based on what you have said so far, I don't think you need Excel.

Have a look here: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-sort...n-word-4173892

Let us know how you get on.

If that takes care of your original question, please select Thread Tools from the menu link above and mark this thread as SOLVED.