Why is my time off by an hour with Now()?

Pretty much says it in the title. When I use the Now() function it’s off by exactly one hour.

Is this because of Daylight Savings Time? Is there a way to get around this?

Conor, is there anything unique about your setup? Are you outside of the US for example?

Nigel.

Nope, I’m in Colorado.

Ah this is because all our time formulas currently return PST values. We have a work item to allow setting a time zone for a doc. Though that brings up another question - would it make sense to you that there would be a doc level timezone that would be the same for all users?

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I think establishing a universal time zone across all docs makes a lot of
sense. It eases the conversion process. Converting to the local time zone
could be enabled either by an argument in Now() or maybe by a different
function like NowLocal()

Tangentially, I’m a really big fan of universal time in general. Like, why
are we even doing this time zone bologna? Let’s just have one time zone we
all agree to

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I have suggested a hack to some folks to create a named formula called NowLocal() and use it place of Now() - while we get it figured out.

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I had this problem too, but it’s off by 9 hours since I’m in Sweden!

Like @mallika suggests I created a variable:
NowLocal() = Now() + Hours(9)

I also needed to change the Today() so that it was correct:
TodayLocal() = NowLocal().DateTimeTruncate("day")

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Thanks for the good tip, but I don’t understand where to create this variable…where do I define variables in general? Sorry I am brand new to this…

Type the equal sign (=) anywhere on the writing surface or click the red plus icon in the top left corner to add a Formula.

Sorry, I still don’t understand. I can type a recognized formula with =, but I can’t define a new variable.
If I type =Now() it tells me it is 3/19/2018 2:26:37 AM, but where I am it is 3/19/2018 3:56:37 PM
Like you wrote above, I tried to create NowLocal and TodayLocal variables, but it is not recognizing it as new variables and I can’t use it anywhere like in my filters.

Hi Sonya, take a look at this -

You might be missing the Named Formula entry point.

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Thank you!!! Yes that’s exactly what I was missing… Haven’t read through enough forums and tutorials yet. :slight_smile: Thank you so much!!

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I feel as though Coda should automatically factor in users location when using the Now() variable. Or if not, provide an alternative built in variable like NowLocal()

I don’t think it should be doc-specific, but rather, user specific. If you’re using a Coda doc with users in different countries and it’s being used to schedule video meetings for example, the date/time provided to each user for the meeting time should be relative to their timezone.

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@Josh_Unwin1 - Agree with you. Time zone work is in our radar but this is a hack for now.

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I was wondering why one of the templates thought it was still yesterday. I could fix it with this, thank you @William_Larsten @mallika!

Hi!

Where has it surfaced since this?

Any update on time zone settings? Even just comments are off by 3 hours and it’s throwing the team off. No way to fix that with a workaround.

The image provided here is currently broken. Are named formula entry points still available? Does that create a new variable?
Thanks!

Hi @anon45969213 - looks like that image went dead, sorry! I just uploaded it again.

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