Why is Today() is not updating?

[MBB]

I have a document in which users can make reservations for certain equipments. I need a lookup column of all reservations which are for Today(). If I expand the formula, I get the appropriate results, but the table itself does not update. In this example today is feb 23 but it is showing feb 18, therefore the lookup is showing the reservations from feb 18 instead of today. refreshing the page does not resolve the issue

thank you for all suggestions or workarounds

[Micah_Lucero]

Hey, it’s a bit hard to tell in the screenshots, but it looks like you might be putting the formula in the wrong place. Try opening the options panel and putting it in the filter section there!

[MBB]

thanks for your suggestion micah but that is not the issue. the first image shows a formula that is not in a table, it is just embedded in the document, the line is: Today is: Today(). For some reason it is displaying the value of Today() when I last opened the document which was on feb 18.

[Christiaan_Huizer]

hi @MBB ,

two things:

• Today() should output the date of today, anything else is wrong, you can test with Now() that should include the date of today as well as a check
• in the function, the table is green, the date is purple, which may indicate that do not look into the table you reference, but in an other table, can you check that?

cheers, christiaan

[Piet_Strydom]

Hi MBB

It is nearly impossible to assist you without the doc, or a sanitised copy of the doc.

Could you please share?

P

[MBB]

I can’t share this specific doc, but it is not doing it anymore. I will try to reproduce it in a separate table without the lookups

[Sebastien]

Hi MMB,

I had the same experience as what your screenshot shows: an “inline” call to a formula doesn’t update.

My understanding is that such call is evaluated only once, and stored. So in particular it’s not evaluated each time the doc is loaded. That’s rather counter-intuitive, and not very useful.

However, you wrote that it’s no longer an issue. Could you share what changed? Thanks!

[MBB]

I don’t really know what I did different for it to trigger the update, but I opened my document again after a while and it was showing the correct date. That doesn’t really work for how I plan to use this document as I need it to be correct every day. I might try using Now() instead of Today() because Now() seems to update every second, even when it is inline.

I have made a test document which show, inline, Today() , Now() , and Now().ToDate(). I will check every day to see if they all display the same date. if not, it should confirm the bug

[MBB]

I am now confident that there is a bug which affect how Today() and Now() formulas display their result. in this example, Now() properly displays the time updating itself every second, but Today() and even Now().ToDate() display yesterday’s date (the date when I created the test document).

In my actual use case this is very troublesome because when I use Today() to filter a lookup column it propagates the error and filters using the wrong date. it I am still looking for a workaround, at least a reliable way to force the page to update with the correct date. neither a normal reload or empty cache and hard reload solve the issue.

thank you for all suggestions

[Pch]

@MBB

In my actual use case this is very troublesome because when I use Today() to filter a lookup column it propagates the error and filters using the wrong date.

You’re not alone, if it can re-assure you a little .

I use Today() to disable a very simple ModifyRows() button and I need to refresh my doc between 3 to 5 times (or more some days) before Today() does what it needs to do …

The thing is that it’s kind of inconsistent and I’m not able to find the steps to reproduce this behavior 100% of the time (some days, Today() will be refresh faster than others)

I’ve tried cleaning cache & cookies, but it doesn’t change a thing… Today() seems stuck somewhere when I open Chrome in the morning and this doc is loaded, as I voluntarily quit Chrome at the end of the day on that doc so it’s the first thing I’ll see the next morning.

The strange thing with this is that sometimes, when my doc is still opened and it’s actually passed midnight, Today() will work and my button is enable again… But if I don’t click on my button and quit Chrome, the next morning I’ll still have troubles to make Today() work…

Here’s a screenshot of my problematic button in the table :

The button is in the field [Set Today] and date field next to it is just classical Date field (manual entry).
All I’m asking this button to do is to modify the date in the date field and set it to Today() using this very simple action formula :

The button is then disabled using this formula:

The button works as it should as long as I don’t use a formula to disable it … But I actually would like to be able to disable it once its job is done.

I’ll admit, as it’s a “draft” doc that there are a bunch of tables, quite some complicated formulas stored within buttons and some conditional formatting, but it shouldn’t matter …

I’ve tried everything I could think of in the disable if formula :

• thisRow.Date.ToDate() = Today()
• thisRow.Date = Today().ToDate()
• thisRow.Date.ToDate() = Today().ToDate()

But this also didn’t solve the issue : Today() is hard to refresh and is kind of preventing me to use that button the way I would like

Maybe I’m completely missing something here though , but it’s not the first time I use a similar setup and never encountered such issues before (as far as I can remember)

I had the intention to re-use the date set by my Set Today button elsewhere in my doc but I honestly just stopped there (because of some time issues but also well, because of this )