Numbers app is automatically updating today's date

The direct answer to your question is that you cannot get it to use the date from the header. When you enter a time with no date into a cell that is not formatted as text, it will be given today's date. If the cell is pre-formatted as text, you can enter the "time" and it will be a text representation of that time with no date. You can use it in date&time formulas; Numbers knows what to do with it even though it is text.

Date and Time cells inherently contain a full date and time reference.

While you can use the cell formatting to show/hide any date/time components you don't want to see, under the hood it's still a file datetime field.

If you enter a value that Numbers recognizes as a time, it assumes current day (as you've noticed)

If you enter a value that Numbers recognizes as a date, the time is set to midnight (0:00:00 am)

There are a couple of alternatives, though, depending on what you're trying to do.

You may be able to use the Duration cell type. These contain just a HH:MM:SS[.ss] data type that can be used in time calculations.

You may also use an intermediary field where you enter a time in the cell (which gets converted to datetime based on the current day), and you use a separate cell to calculate the time component of that cell with the date component of the column header. The viability/specifics of this may vary depending on your table layout.

Hi Vickie,

Numbers has a Date & Time cell format. In that format, you can't have one without the other. Are you trying to insert a Date without a Time, or a Time without a Date? Text format may be the answer. More information on your overall aim may help us to find a solution.

Regards,

Ian.