Merge Tag as a default value for Admin Only field?

David, I am trying the hooks method and it seems to work, only not with merge tags. I tried generating regular text and that worked, so I tried a custom merge tag from my form, and that only spit back out the merge tag code. So I tried a standard merge tag and that also just generated the code verbatim in my results rather than the value for that field like I want.

Here is what I am trying:

add_action("gform_pre_submission_2", "pre_submission_handler");
function pre_submission_handler($form){
    $_POST["input_3"] = "{date_mdy}";
}

And the results are simply the merge tag "{date_mdy}" rather than the value I want to show up (in this case, the date). Is there a filter I need to use to tell the function to recognize those characters as a merge tag instead of plain text?

So close, that got me 50% there! My last hurdle is the name field. I used the advanced field "Name" (format: normal). And I can't get the value to output. I've tried:

$_POST["input_1"]

and

$_POST["input_1.1"] ." ". $_POST["input_1.2"]

and

$_POST["input_1.3"] ." ". $_POST["input_1.6"]
(this is the designation for the first/last name fields in the merge tag from the notification section)

Is there a different designation for the multi-field advanced fields?

It was input_1.3 & input_1.6 so I guess:

$_POST["input_1.3"] ." ". $_POST["input_1.6"]

should be working. Alas, it is not.

EDIT: Found the solution: I used "input_1_3" instead of input_1.3 and it worked.

Consider this issue solved. Thank you for all your help!