How to add a date or time stamp to an Access database table

For ease of application, you may want to add a date/time stamp to each record in your database to determine when each record is added to the database. In an Access database application, the now () function can be used to easily accomplish this task. This article is a step-by-step introduction to the entire add process, very simple. The access version used in this article is Access 2007, and for the previous version, the add steps are similar but not exactly consistent.

1. Open an Access database that contains a table that you want to add a date or time stamp to;

2. Double-click the table in the left pane of the window where you want to add a date or time stamp;

3. Choose Design view to switch the table to Design view mode from the Drop-down menu of view in the upper left corner of the Office Ribbon interface;

4. Click the space in the first blank line in the field Name column of the table and enter a name for the column in the box;

5. Click the arrow next to the word "text" in the data type column of the same row and choose Date/Time from the Drop-down menu;

6. In the Field Properties pane at the bottom of the screen, enter "Now" in the "Default value" column.

7. Or in the Field Properties pane, click the arrow in the corresponding space in the Show Time selector property and select Never in the Drop-down menu;

8. Save the database;

9. By adding a new record to the database to confirm that the new field settings are working, access should add a timestamp to the "Record Add date" field in the burrow.

Tip: the now () function adds the current date and time to the field, or you can choose to add only a date without adding a time with the dates () function.