Is there a TIMEZONE() function in Google Sheets?

No. Sheets exposes the spreadsheet's own time zone via File → Settings, but there's no formula that converts a cell to an arbitrary IANA zone. You have to add or subtract the offset manually or use Apps Script.

How do I handle daylight saving time in a formula?

Either maintain a small offset table indexed by date and VLOOKUP against it, write an Apps Script function that uses Utilities.formatDate with the target IANA zone, or do the conversion outside the sheet using a DST-aware tool like our converter.

How do I subtract hours in Google Sheets?

Express the offset as a fraction of a day. One hour is 1/24. So subtracting 5 hours from A2 is =A2 - (5/24).

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How to Convert Time Zones in Google Sheets (2026 Guide)

By Daniel Reyes · Engineering contributorJune 5, 20266 min read

Step-by-step guide to converting time zones in Google Sheets using built-in formulas, with DST-aware patterns, ready-to-copy examples, and a faster shareable alternative.

Google Sheets has no native “convert this time to that time zone” function. The trick is that a Google Sheets timestamp is just a number (days since 1899-12-30), so converting between time zones is a matter of adding or subtracting hours expressed as a fraction of a day.

The simplest formula

If A2 contains a time in UTC and you want it in New York (UTC−4 during EDT):

=A2 + (-4/24)

That gives you a New York timestamp during summer. The catch: New York is UTC−5 in winter (EST). If your sheet runs year-round, a hard-coded offset is wrong half the year.

DST-aware conversion

Google Sheets doesn't expose IANA time zones to formulas, so the common workaround is a small helper table mapping each date range to the correct offset, and a VLOOKUP against it. For most one-off use cases that's heavier than it needs to be.

A cleaner alternative for shareable timestamps: convert once with our time zone converter and paste the resulting shareable link into the cell. The link encodes the exact instant, so collaborators see the right local time in their own zone — DST handled for them.

Formatting the result

Select the converted cell.
Open Format → Number → More formats → More date and time formats.
Pick a 24-hour pattern like yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm so the output is unambiguous across regions.

When to skip the spreadsheet

For meeting invites or anything you'll share, a converter link is almost always better than a spreadsheet cell, because it stays correct across DST changes and renders in the reader's local zone. Use Sheets when you need to convert a whole column of timestamps; use the meeting planner when you're scheduling people.

Frequently asked

Is there a TIMEZONE() function in Google Sheets?: No. Sheets exposes the spreadsheet's own time zone via File → Settings, but there's no formula that converts a cell to an arbitrary IANA zone. You have to add or subtract the offset manually or use Apps Script.
How do I handle daylight saving time in a formula?: Either maintain a small offset table indexed by date and VLOOKUP against it, write an Apps Script function that uses Utilities.formatDate with the target IANA zone, or do the conversion outside the sheet using a DST-aware tool like our converter.
How do I subtract hours in Google Sheets?: Express the offset as a fraction of a day. One hour is 1/24. So subtracting 5 hours from A2 is =A2 - (5/24).