Tech Support question: Excel on Windows

[Kevy Baby]

I use a PC at work quite frequently and Excel fairly extensively. Two things I have not been able to figure out:

On Excel on my Mac, I can hit Command-= and it will insert the current date. At one point I knew the keystroke for inserting the current TIME. However, I cannot figure out what the keystroke is for these two items (most importantly, inserting the time) on the PC version. Nor could I figure out how to configure these under the "Customize" option in the Tools menu. BTW: it is Excel 2003. Anybody know these keyboard commands or how to assign them?

Secondly, does anybody now how to provide a count of a series of cells if the information to be counted is text? Basically I would need to just know how many cells in a range have SOMETHING in them. I know that if I use the COUNT function, it returns how many cells have numbers in them. I want to be able to count cells with ANYTHING in them.

Thank you in advance for any assistance!!!

[scaeagles]

I think "Counta" works for counting text in the exact same fashion as "count" does for numbers.

Can't help you on the first one, though.

[Ponine]

well

=NOW()

Gives you the date AND time. But you want them seperate..

=TODAY()

The date

[Ghoulish Delight]

You know, there's this amazing thing called "Help"...

Current date Select a cell and press CTRL+;
Current time Select a cell and press CTRL+SHIFT+;

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Ponine

well

=NOW()

Gives you the date AND time. But you want them seperate..

=TODAY()

The date

Careful with those...those recalculate every time you access the worksheet. The above keystrokes insert the current time, and do not change once input.

[Ponine]

He's right. I took what you said by current time and assumed you wanted it to change. If not, do it GD's way.

help.. who uses the help function?

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

You know, there's this amazing thing called "Help"...

I actually did search help, but must not have used the correct search parameters (or didn't spend enough time there or I am just a plain idiot). Thank you GD! I owe ya a Mojo.

Originally Posted by Ponine

He's right. I took what you said by current time and assumed you wanted it to change. If not, do it GD's way.

Yeah I needed to capture the static time. I use the NOW function for another use (as a base flag for conditional formatting on a spreadsheet that tells me when a step in a project is due).

Conditional formatting is tres cool!