Ever wonder how to insert date in Excel, more particularly to insert last modification date in your Excel cell? For your work in Excel, last modified date will make tracking easier. Let’s say you maintain an employee directory, people get hired, move to different office branch, etc. You use Excel to centralize each employee’s information such as hiring date, position, office branch, and more. You have several prints of the file, and if someone (could be your colleague, team member, or employee concerned) modifies it online, but your Employee Directory file doesn’t show last modification time, it will be difficult for you to know which version of the prints is the most updated. Having your file showing you the last time it was modified will make your work easier. In this article, we will firstly see how to display creation time and last modification time in Excel. Then, we will see how RowShare, an alternative that integrates with Excel, can respond to this need.

Excel’s Last Modified Date Function

If you simply want to see the creation time and last modification timcreae in Excel (for Excel 2016), the way to do it is just to:
  1. Click on “File”
  2. Select “Info”
  3. Find the information you need under the “Related Dates” section

  But, if you want to go as far as inserting last modification time, please note that in Excel, there is no feature to do it. You need to use Excel VBA function. Open your Excel file and do the following steps:
  1. In your Excel worksheet, cllick on ALT + F11 to open the Visual Basic editor
  2. In Visual Basic Editor, click on the “Insert” menu
  3. Select “Module”
  4. Paste the following code into the new module:Public Function ModDate()ModDate = Format(FileDateTime(ThisWorkbook.FullName), “m/d/yy h:n ampm”)End Function
  5. Before saving your module, make sure to save your Excel file as Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook
  6. Save your module
  7. Return to your Excel worksheet
  8. Paste the following code into the cell where you want to display the last modification time:  =ModDate()
In this example, the code is pasted in cell A2.

  “The following features cannot be saved in macro-free workbooks: .VB Project. To save a file with these features, click No, and then choose a macro-enabled file type in the File Type list. To continue saving as a macro-free workbook, Click Yes”. If you are getting this message while saving your module, you need to save your Excel file as Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook.
Note: The last modification time that will be displayed on your Excel sheet is the file-level modification time, and not the row-level modification time. In addition, when you make an edit, it doesn’t update automatically. You must close your file and reopen it to have the last update time.

Display Created Time and Last Modified Time in RowShare

Now, let’s investigate another solution, an online collaboration tool which integrates with Excel to enhance your working efficiency. With RowShare’s “Creation Date” and “Last Write Date” column types, you can always be informed on when an entry was created and track when it was updated. All you need to do is to simply follow these steps:
  1. Create a table from a template or from a blank page.
  2. Add a column of type “Creation Date” and a column of type “Last Write Date”
That’s really all, it’s as simple as that! Here is a quick video tutorial:
As you can see, whenever a row is modified, the last write date of that row will be updated.
Tip: If you want to see the last modification time of the whole table, simply sort your “Last Write Date” column in descending order to see the last time your file was updated.
That’s not everything! You can also get notified whenever a change is made. All you have to do is simply clicking on the “Bell” sign above your table on the top right. Whenever someone modifies any rows of the table that you are subscribed to, RowShare will send you a notification email.
  Tip: If you already work using Excel, especially to analyze data, you can always import your work to RowShare to maximize your collaboration and use our Excel Sync feature.
So, don’t just take my word for it, go ahead and give it a try yourself!

Happy RowSharing!