Without using the Today () function. 1] Highlight rows with dates earlier than today’s date by using the Today () function The Today () function represents the current date in Microsoft Excel.

With the use of Excel’s conditional formatting, you can set the rules once and let Excel do the highlighting for you.

When you add a date, it uses a predefined format. Even though you need a format like 02/08/2021, Excel Online and Google Sheets may use something else, like 08-02-2021.