SQL Server Management Studio - Shortcut for entering Dates?

Question

In SSMS, when editing a row of data in a table, you can press Ctrl+0 to enter a null in the current cell. Is there any shortcut for entering the current date in a cell?

Solution 1

This page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175917.aspx has the shortcut documentation for the SQL Table Editor.

Under "Results Pane" it specifies the available shortcuts including "Enter null into a cell: CTRL+0". There are no other shortcuts listed that would do what you wish, so I would say you're out of luck with any easy out of the box trick.

Solution 2

Well, you can add GetDate() as the default value of the column.
Then, if you fill in the other fields in a new row, and do nothing in your date field, it will add the current date when saving the new row.

EDIT: Another solution, if you are an AutoHotkey user (or want to be) is to create an application-specific hotkey that inserts the current date.

FormatTime,CurrentDate,,M/d/yyyy
#IfWinActive,Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
    ^9::SendInput,%CurrentDate%
return

You can add {RIGHT} after %CurrentDate% to automatically move to the next cell.
You can add h:mm or h:mm tt to the first line to include the current time.

Comments

[Jay]

...but if you are still allowing nulls, you have to delete NULL from the column.

[Randy Minder]

Thanks - I suspected that was the case.

[Jay]

That hotkey is Ctrl+9, but you can make it anything you want. ^ for ctrl, ! for alt, and + for shift. {F1} etc. for function keys.

[Gerben]

That being the case, the quickest thing to type is the date in YYYY-mm-dd format (the time will be automatically set to 00:00:00).