Have the Enter key pop in the current date in a date field

[Mark_Fleming]

When I double click in a date field i a record, it brings up a calendar with the current date highlighted. It would be fantastic if at that point, if I just pressed the enter key, then the current date would be be popped into the field.

As it is now, I have to lift my fingers and move the cursor over the calendar to today’s date or the Today button and click it. If entered lots of new records, this gets tedious. And I’d think entering the current date is what people are doing quite often.

[Justin_Barrett]

There’s a keyboard shortcut for adding the current date to a date field. On the Mac it’s Command-; (semicolon). For Windows, it would probably be CTRL-; . To verify, click the Help link in the top-right corner of the Airtable UI, and select the “Keyboard shortcuts” entry. The shortcut I’m referring to is (in my list) the last item in the “General” category, just above the “Grid view” header.

There are a bunch of really helpful shortcuts on that list, and I highly recommend reading through it.

[Mark_Fleming]

Thank you, I will look at that and try my best to remember a few key ones. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that we all use so many tools that have shortcuts and there is such an overload of keystrokes that we must commit to memory.

I do hope that you consider the Enter Key approach for this still. Might as well simplify some common tasks when it’s possible.

[Justin_Barrett]

Mark_Fleming:

I do hope that you consider the Enter Key approach for this still.

If I were an official Airtable rep, I’d gladly do that, but I’m just another user like yourself. :slightly_smiling_face: You can tell which community members are staff by an “Airtable” badge/label appearing by their name.

[Justin_Barrett]

On another note, I totally get what you’re saying about trying to keep track of hotkey settings between different apps. I don’t recommend that anyone try to learn every hotkey. For me, I’ll use a program for a while to see what tasks/operations I do frequently, then go searching for hotkeys just for those things. That’s how I learned of the date hotkey. I was entering dates a lot, so I looked to see if a hotkey was available to simplify the process. Similarly, I wanted to find an easier way to switch between tables or bases, which led me to find their hotkeys. For now, those three hotkey combos are all I really know for Airtable, but they’re easy to remember because I use them a lot. The hotkeys you choose to learn should be driven by what you do.