Default Date Value with Date and Time

I recently answered a question on SharePoint Exchange, where the original poster was trying to set the default date value of a Date column to “Today’s Date”, but his column was setup as date and time, and he noticed that although the “hour” of the time was set, the “minute” was actually not set.

What complicates this matter is that the dropdown for minute goes at 5 minute intervals, so it’s not setup for a user to select all minutes within an hour. While this may be a unique use case that isn’t often needed, I was happy to offer up a solution that was purely out-of-the-box, and easy to setup.

Setting the default date value with hour and time

1. Go the settings of your Date column
2. Change the “Default value” option to “Calculated Value”
3. Enter =NOW() as the calculated value

Upon doing this, you’ll find that when creating a new item, the correct minute value is also selected, and if its a minute outside of the 5 minute intervals, it will still be added to the dropdown list.

I hope that helps anyone else having this issue.

Cheers,
Matt