Calculate a date field to be the current date

Summary

Instructions provided describe how to calculate a date field to the current date using ArcMap.

Note:
This article pertains to ArcGIS versions 8.x and 9.x. Later versions of ArcGIS may contain different functionality, as well as different names and locations for menus, commands and geoprocessing tools.

Procedure

1. Open the attribute table that contains the date field.
2. Right-click the date field and select Calculate Values.
3. If you are comfortable calculating values outside of an edit session click Yes.
4. From within the Field Calculator dialog box set the Type radio button to Date.
5. Set the field calculator equal to:

NOW()

6. Click OK on the field calculator to perform the calculation.