Date Field does not update

[John Hind]

Publisher 1.8.3.641, Windows 10

I created a template with a Date & Time field (the one in General Information tagged <Current Date & Time>). When I create a new document from this template the field does not update and continues to show the date when the template was created. If I right-click on the field with Frame Text Tool and click on 'Edit Field' nothing on this dialog changes the text displayed by the field, 'update' button has no effect and neither does changing the format drop down

Further to this, I tried the 'Created' field in 'Document Statistics' instead. In this case the date is not updated when a document is created from the template, but is updated when the document is first saved (so the field should properly be 'First Saved' rather than 'Created'.  With this field, the 'Edit Field' dialog has no 'update' button, but it does respond to changes in the format dropdown.

[Gabe]

Hi @John Hind,

Current date and time will only show the date/time you placed them in the document, unless you manually edit field > Update. 

Created date seems to update for me just fine when I create a new document from template. Can you attach a screen recording of your workflow ?

[John Hind]

I'm baffled. I definitely saw a situation where the 'Expand Field' and 'Edit Field' context menu options were available and the Edit Field dialog appeared but the the 'update' button and the format drop-down did not change the field text. However I have been unable to repeat that behavior today.

I've inserted a video showing creation of a document from a template. This was done today (6th May) from a template created yesterday. Note that the Document Statistics fields for the new document reflect the file details, including creation date, of the template file until the new document has been saved. This contrasts with creating a new document from a Preset where the 'Created' field is initialised to the current date and the filename and path are blank until the document is saved.

It also strikes me that the 'Date and time' field is not very useful if it has to be manually updated, particularly if there are several occurrences and they might be on master pages. If you have to locate them all and manually update each of them you may as well just put them in as ordinary text and use find and replace.

[Gabe]

18 hours ago, John Hind said:

It also strikes me that the 'Date and time' field is not very useful if it has to be manually updated, particularly if there are several occurrences and they might be on master pages. If you have to locate them all and manually update each of them you may as well just put them in as ordinary text and use find and replace.

That's not a real time clock field. It's a "Date and time", which prints the date and time at that moment. 

18 hours ago, John Hind said:

've inserted a video showing creation of a document from a template. This was done today (6th May) from a template created yesterday. Note that the Document Statistics fields for the new document reflect the file details, including creation date, of the template file until the new document has been saved. This contrasts with creating a new document from a Preset where the 'Created' field is initialised to the current date and the filename and path are blank until the document is saved.

Issue logged :). It looks like it does not take into account the creation date of the new document, but only the creation date of the template. 

[John Hind]

5 hours ago, Gabe said:

That's not a real time clock field. It's a "Date and time", which prints the date and time at that moment. 

Thanks for logging the Creation Date bug.

Regarding the Date and Time, I still cannot see the point in it being a field if there is no automated or centralized update.  May as well just be a text insertion macro. One way of making it more useful without a breaking change would be to provide 'update' buttons on the Fields panel. This could be against the specific updatable field types (those with update buttons on their 'Edit Field' dialog) and/or a global button to update all updatable fields in the document. Also the facility per template to set auto updating of fields on creation of a new document from the template.

[Gabe]

There is no such thing as automated "clock" field in an exported format, so why implement it in the app, when you can't do anything with it? Why would one need the Date and time "live"? I'm just trying to understand how you would use it if it was the way you expected it. 

[John Hind]

1 hour ago, Gabe said:

There is no such thing as automated "clock" field in an exported format, so why implement it in the app, when you can't do anything with it? Why would one need the Date and time "live"? I'm just trying to understand how you would use it if it was the way you expected it. 

This begs the question "what is the intended use case for the  Date and Time field as currently implemented?" At the moment the implementation is schizophrenic: you can update it per occurrence, but only to the current date and time and multiple occurrences can be different if they were last updated on different days. If it is a 'current date and time' all the occurrences should be the same and either automatically update or at least have a single action to update all occurrences. If it is a general 'Date and Time' field there needs to be a way of picking a date and time other than the present (word processors often have a pop-up calendar), and in this case it makes sense for multiple occurrences not to be synchronized.

My general use case for fields is for templates. Ideally, when I create a document based on a template I do not want to have to edit the master pages, especially if a text substitution occurs multiple times such as a title in the header of multiple master page layouts. This is why I raised a feature request for user-defined fields so the template designer can define them appropriate to the specific document type. But meantime, the existing fields can be used that way, for example for a product brochure the template designer could specify that the 'Title' field be the product name.

Fixing the bug on Creation Date will address many of the use cases for a date field, for example the date on a letter probably wants to be the date when you created the file or perhaps the printed date. But a use case for Date and Time might be 'publication date' which would not necessarily be the same as any of the automatic dates. But this is of very limited use if you can only update it to the current date and you have to do this update individually for each occurrence in the actual text (which may be in the master pages).

[Gabe]

1 hour ago, John Hind said:

But a use case for Date and Time might be 'publication date' which would not necessarily be the same as any of the automatic dates.

If that's what you're after, why would "Printed or Exported date" not work? The "automated" current date and time you are after will stop at the export time anyways, and will have the same effect as "Printed or Exported date".

[John Hind]

13 minutes ago, Gabe said:

If that's what you're after, why would "Printed or Exported date" not work? The "automated" current date and time you are after will stop at the export time anyways, and will have the same effect as "Printed or Exported date".

I'd not realized 'printed' meant 'exported or printed' - that does make it a bit more useful in this specific case. Still leaves the 'Date &  Time' field not really doing anything useful as currently implemented.

[nodeus]

In my edited document there are lines of text with the date of access to certain data on the website and this is always the current date (making a daily digest).

It would be nice if the Date & Time fields were automatically updated in the document.

I think this is the case.

[walt.farrell]

30 minutes ago, nodeus said:

It would be nice if the Date & Time fields were automatically updated in the document.

In the Fields studio panel you have a choice of several dates. Two of them in the Document Statistics section, Printed and Saved, will update if you use them in your document.

However, using them would mean that all the dates in your document would always be the same, which for a daily digest seems wrong. So, perhaps you would want the Date and Time field (in the General Information section), instead?  Perhaps that one will be static once used, and not change in the existing data each day.

[nodeus]

That's right. Date & Time does not change to the current date. This is exactly what is required everyday automatically.
So far, the Saved field in the Document statistics section is a solution for me now.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, nodeus said:

That's right. Date & Time does not change to the current date. This is exactly what is required everyday automatically.
So far, the Saved field in the Document statistics section is a solution for me now.

I guess I still don't understand. If, every day, you add some more data, and insert Date & Time into that new data, you would get the current date for the data you're adding. You wouldn't want yesterday's data to have its date changed, would you?

[nodeus]

I need the current date to be automatically inserted into the text every day.

Every new day is a new current value.

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, nodeus said:

I need the current date to be automatically inserted into the text every day.

Every new day is a new current value.

If each day is a new page, then you could perhaps use a Master Page with a Text Frame that contains the Date & Time field. Create your new document page from that Master, and you have it.

If not (that is, if you're adding to an existing page and Text Frame), then I don't see any solution other than insert the Date & Time field manually (in the Fields panel, double-click on the name Date & Time while the text cursor is where you want it inserted).

 

[DaveLawrence]

Hmm...This is ghetto. I'm starting to use BetterTouchTool on mac which allows you to create the date in any format and you can add any shortcut or string of characters. Way faster than all this menu hunting.

 

But yeah, there should be an option for fields:

1.  "Update on Save"
2. "Update on Print or Export"