Hi @MS5 ,
Do you want to populate the "Modified By" field with current portal user?
If the Contact field that you mentioned is "Modified By", I think it is not necessary to fill in the areas "Associate to user when inserting" and add a new record within "Entity Form Metadata" (rather than "Entity reference").
The "Modified By" field is a System field in CDS Entity, which could not be assigned value manually, which would be populated automatically by CDS System automatically.
You could consider create a new LookUp field (which bind to Contact Entity) in your Primary Entity, then try above solution I provided, check if the issue is solved.
Best regards,