Back in the day of WSS 2 and SPS 2003 you couldn’t use [Today] in Filters.

For example if you tried to setup a filter like this to show items added in the last 7 days

Created is greater than [Today] – 7

You would receive an error “Filter Value is not a valid date” when clicking OK

This lead to all sorts of inventive work arounds including calculated columns to add 7 days onto the Created date and the trick to use [Today] in calculated columns.

After kicking up a bit of a storm with some ill considered remarks in a post explaining the limitations of the [Today] trick I realised I had some of my own old posts that needed updating. Live by the sword…

<tongue-in-cheek> The Truth about using [Today] in Filters </tongue-in-cheek>

In WSS 2 / SPS 2003 you could not use a filter containing a [Today] formula as shown above.

In WSS 3 / MOSS 2007 you can. If you try

Created is greater than [Today] – 7

you see a similar error -

Created is greater than [Today]-7

Yup, that easy.

Just to make clear – you can use other fields. For example to to show all the tasks due in the next 7 days or overdue.

Due Date is less than [Today]+7 AND Status is not equal to Completed

If you are writing CAML queries then see this post about using the OffsetDays attribute.