Date field defaulting to a date even though the

[GISManager4]

When particular users submit requests the "Today'sDate" is defaulting to (a particular repeating) random date in the past this does not line up with the creation date.  Every single submission by these particular users defaults to the date specified below. 

SUSPECT: Upon review of the posted ArcGIS Online ESRI update archive, the dates seem to align near bug 'fixes', perhaps the updates are related???

OR

Maybe it is the apostrophe in the column title wreaking havoc???

CURRENT STATUS: As time has gone on it is now escalating to impact more & more users. It first started with: 

Robert W. Richardson (robert@alphasurveyor.com) defaulting to November 16, 2023 (first occurred AFTER 11/16/2023)

          then expanded to include: 

Al Ansley (al@gaddysurveydesign.com) defaulting to February 2, 2024 (first occurred AFTER  2/2/2024)

           and is now including:

Adison Blakeslee (ablakeslee@presintesurvey.com) defaulting to February 26, 2024 (first occurred after 2/26/2024)

GAIANE MARGARIAN (GIAIANE@SURVEYLANDEXPRESS.com) defaulting to February 29, 2024 (first occurred AFTER 2/29/2024)

EXAMPLE: Highlighted are some examples of the issue in just a short  2-day span. NOTE: Anything that was glitching prior to February 29, 2024 was already edited to be accurate by myself for tracking & reporting purposes. I have left the March inaccuracies to show the issue:

[SMH-Rio]

The "Today's Date" question is editable by the user. Is this really necessary?

If the intention is to collect the date of the request, I would leave the question as hidden (or create a question of type 'end', which will capture exactly the day/time that she pressed the 'Send' button).

I have 2 hypotheses:

1) People are manually editing the date question;

2) The date on the person's computer is wrong, and this impacts the 'today()' default. However, I find this an unlikely hypothesis, since most browsers give a warning message when the date is wrong.

My first attempt would be to stop editing this date (leaving it as 'end', for example) and monitor the data to see if the error continues to occur.

Hope this helps.

[DougBrowning]

Not sure I am following but I also wonder of they are going back in and editing later or using save as draft and then editing later.  This can cause a recalc of the today().

Have you tried once(today()) so it does not recalc in this situations?

[GISManager4]

The users are not going back and editing the submitted surveys. On their side they see the correct date.

[GISManager4]

1) Today's Dat has a default value of 

today()