Setting a time zone for Airtable’s CREATED_TIME formula

Here’s a quick Airtable tip.

You may want to record the created time of a record and Airtable does provide a convenient formula for this, aptly named CREATED_TIME(). However, you may have run into the issue that it does not display the time in your local time. This is because by default GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time) is used. You can get your local time by clicking on the Formatting tab and unchecking the option “Use the same time zone (GMT) for all collaborators“.

If you need further customization of the date format or a specific time zone you can do so utilizing datetime_format and set_timezone formulas in conjunction with created_time formula.

Here’s how to set a custom timezone for the CREATED_TIME formula.

DATETIME_FORMAT(SET_TIMEZONE(CREATED_TIME(), 'America/Port_of_Spain'), 'DD-MM-YYYY hh:mm') 

It is weird that you need to use the DATETIME_FORMAT as well but without this, the time will not display in your local time.