The coolest trick is to enter the default value using the [Today] dynamic parameter.  Then you have a built-in way to have items expire automagically after so many days past the initial creation date of the announcement.  How sweet is that!

To set a default expiration date: 

1. Go to the List Settings for the announcement list.
2. In the Columns section, click on the Expires column.
3. In the Default value area, select Calculated Value.  Enter “[Today]+X” where X is the number of days later you desire the expire to happen.  In this example, the default expire value is set to be 30 days later than today’s date.

Advantages of setting a default expiration date:

If you do not enter a default value for an announcement app list, then you will most likely find that the majority of the announcement list items will be created with no expiration dates because the expiration date is not a required field.   As a result, the announcement list can get pretty lengthy as the oldest ones do not fall off.  Of course to deal with this situation, you could tweak the view to show only “Current Announcements”.  But you may have announcement list where it is nice to have a default expiration date value work upfront for you.  An example scenario may be when an announcement app is being used as a bulletin board of items that employees are selling.

Related Posts:

How to Create a Dynamic [Today] Filtered View in SharePoint

How to Create a Dynamic [Me] Filtered View in SharePoint

SharePoint Resources

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