# Displaying a default date on the calendar

**URL:** <https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974>\
**Category:** Technical Support\
**Tags:** forms, date\
**Created:** [October 15, 2020, 9:41am UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974 "2020-10-15T09:41:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![iesmail](https://communityhealthtoolkit.b-cdn.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/a5b964/32.png) [@iesmail](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/u/iesmail)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2020, 9:41am UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974/1 "2020-10-15T09:41:03Z")

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I have a `date` field in my XLSForm and I would like to display a default value. I have tried to add the following under the defaults column but it does not display anything.

```
2020-10-15 
date('2020-10-15')

```

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**Author:** ![Nick](https://communityhealthtoolkit.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/nick/32/99_2.png) [@Nick](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/u/Nick)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2020, 3:20pm UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974/2 "2020-10-21T15:20:36Z")

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I don’t think we have this documented anywhere and [XLSForm Docs](https://xlsform.org/en/) doesn’t really seem to either.

However, I found the mention of using `today()` in the calculation field and tried your `date('2020-10-15')` in the calculation field. It seems to set that as the default date.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![iesmail](https://communityhealthtoolkit.b-cdn.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/a5b964/32.png) [@iesmail](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/u/iesmail)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 11:38am UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974/3 "2020-10-26T11:38:00Z")

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What I noticed is that even though it sets it as a default value, you can’t override it even if you select a new date from calendar.

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**Author:** ![Nick](https://communityhealthtoolkit.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/nick/32/99_2.png) [@Nick](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/u/Nick)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 12:47pm UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974/4 "2020-10-26T12:47:58Z")

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Can you provide the report and details(what version of the app, what browser, user type, etc…) about your app instance? I tried it just now and it is updating.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![iesmail](https://communityhealthtoolkit.b-cdn.net/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/i/a5b964/32.png) [@iesmail](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/u/iesmail)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 12:55pm UTC](https://forum.communityhealthtoolkit.org/t/displaying-a-default-date-on-the-calendar/974/5 "2020-10-26T12:55:32Z")

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CHT version 3.9.1  
Chrome Browser  
CHV user