Date format incorrect

[C355#90 3]

It appears that Evernote does not obey the device's set region for date format. It instead uses the US format of mm/dd/yyyy. It would be preferable to use my region's format of dd/mm/yyyy. Otherwise how do I know if 7/6/2022 is July 6th or June 7th? Or instead use the international format of yyyy/mm/dd and no one will be  confused. Alternatively use the month mnemonic eg: 7 Jun 2022 or Jun 7 2022.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

Just an update....

Here's the script I used in AutoHotKey to insert a date time stamp in the ISO8601 format.

!d::

FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss

SendInput, %CurrentDateTime%

return

 

outputs >      2022-08-06 13:18:49

 

where !d::  = ALT D

I settled on "ALT D" as ALT D works in v10, v8, Notepad,  and MS Word.

in v10, ALT SHIFT D inserts Date

in v10, CTRL SHIFT D inserts Time

 

CTRL ALT SHIFT D .. worked in v10 but is just too cumbersome for my fingers

CTRL ALT D .............. v10 (I forget); opens Text Formatting in v8 (if I recall correctly);  works in Notepad.

CTRL ALT 0 .............. does NOT work in v10;  works in v8 (CTRL ALT numpad 0/INS key) 

CTRL ALT DOWN ..... does NOT work in v10;  works in v8 (CTRL ALT down arrow) 

 

Some useful URL's

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/insert-date-time-in-any-program-using-keyboard-hotkey/

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/FormatTime.htm
 

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm

.

 

[Mike P 2,246]

9 hours ago, C355#90 said:

It appears that Evernote does not obey the device's set region for date format. It instead uses the US format of mm/dd/yyyy. It would be preferable to use my region's format of dd/mm/yyyy. Otherwise how do I know if 7/6/2022 is July 6th or June 7th? Or instead use the international format of yyyy/mm/dd and no one will be  confused. Alternatively use the month mnemonic eg: 7 Jun 2022 or Jun 7 2022.

What version are you using and where does it use this format? This issue has been raised before and it doesn't seem to be easy to work out where exactly it is getting the format from. For me the date format is in UK format as expected. For example in the note information:

At the top of a note:

or when I press alt+shift+D

I never see anything like 3/7/22.

10.39.6-win-ddl-public (3451)
Editor: v150.2.18380
Service: v1.53.4
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

 

 

[C355#90 3]

6 hours ago, Mike P said:

What version are you using and where does it use this format? This issue has been raised before and it doesn't seem to be easy to work out where exactly it is getting the format from. For me the date format is in UK format as expected. For example in the note information:

At the top of a note:

or when I press alt+shift+D

I never see anything like 3/7/22.

10.39.6-win-ddl-public (3451)
Editor: v150.2.18380
Service: v1.53.4
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

 

 

Interesting mixed bag. The mm/dd/yyyy format is found in the bottom left corner of each note snippet and in the note's History. Although as you point out it's a more readable format in the note Info. I suppose the date change was started but not completed?

-Bob.

 

My version is:

10.39.6-win-ddl-public (3451)
Editor: v150.2.18380
Service: v1.53.4
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

 

[Mike P 2,246]

1 hour ago, C355#90 said:

The mm/dd/yyyy format is found in the bottom left corner of each note snippet and in the note's History.

Interesting. For me the snippet date is the same:

Note history, however, is in the dd/mm/yyyy form but is in the UK format as I would expect:

If only everybody in the world used ISO8601!

[C355#90 3]

Here's one of my note Histories. Odd. Agree everyone using ISO 8601 would be best.

-Bob.

[PinkElephant 6,828]

We had mixups of the date format in the past already. EN uses the system setting.

If I remember it correctly, it had to do with secondary languages. Uninstalling all languages, restarting the device and then getting them installed again solved the problem in the cases reported in the forum (from memory).

[Carl-L-ND 53]

I just updated this past weekend to the latest v10 of EN "Personal".  Have been using v8 on my Android phone and with the matching Windows 10 app on my business laptop to this point since 2013.

I tried to use the legacy v8 keyboard shortcut to insert a date & time and nothing happens.  I then see that the keyboard shortcut has been changed from...  " CTRL ; "  ... to ... " ALT SHIFT D ".   No problem, I can re-learn keyboard shortcuts and using "D" makes more sense for date & time insertion. 

The only problem is that this keyboard shortcut is inserting the date as July 6, 2022 and not 2022-06-06 as per the legacy app.  Also, it only inserts the date so I have to use a second set of keystrokes " CTRL D " to insert the time.   It appears that the time is being inserted with AM and PM and not the 24 hour format that I prefer and was using with the legacy app.

I also noted that when using the TOP LIST View to view Notes, in the Updated column it shows the date as Yesterday (for July 5) or Jul 4 all the way back to Jan 1, and then for the previous year it is listed as 12/29/21.   In the legacy app the Updated column is shown as Yesterday and anything 2 days old or more is shown in full date format, ex: 2022-07-04 17:35.  I prefer the legacy view.

I rechecked my Windows 10 system settings as this is a new'ish laptop and sure enough I have the "SHORT DATE" setting same as it used to be >>  yyyy-mm-dd.  Time is also set correctly for the Short format of 09:40 for 9:40 AM or 13:01 for 1:01 PM.

I have my Win10 system using the recommended "Canadian" English and I have never set-up another language, such as French, and unlike so many previous Win10 installations I've done, I believe this laptop was originally Canadian English and not the usual default of "US English".  

I use the yyyy-mm-dd format extensively to look up all my notes from a specific date when tracking client interactions so this is a big issue for me to get fixed.
 

[agsteele 2,599]

A lot of users run AutoHotKey which enables the ability to create keystrokes formatted as desired. I have Alt+Shift+; and this produces date and time in the format previously used in Legacy. AutoHotKey is a really useful application. Search the forums and you should find the instructions.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

20 hours ago, agsteele said:

A lot of users run AutoHotKey which enables the ability to create keystrokes formatted as desired. I have Alt+Shift+; and this produces date and time in the format previously used in Legacy. AutoHotKey is a really useful application. Search the forums and you should find the instructions.

Thanks!  Took a peek.  Looks complicated.  I do not want to learn scripting but do-able with some copy and pastes.

However, I might keep working from the legacy version as I just saw an issue with searches where v10 is not finding data contained within PDF's I've dropped into notes.  This new version is looking to be the nightmare I was trying to avoid.  Now to find a thread re searching PDF's.

[agsteele 2,599]

The AutoHotKey script was easy to implement - at least I found it to be so.

Haven't had any issues searching inside PDFs with v10 but YMMV.... You may find that some of the issues discussed date back to earlier releases of the program.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

Well.... it is all moot now.  😡  My anti-malware quarantined and deleted EN v10.

Have to start over.

.

[PinkElephant 6,828]

Just out of curiosity: What sort of malware protection are you using ?

[Carl-L-ND 53]

Just now, PinkElephant said:

Just out of curiosity: What sort of malware protection are you using ?

EMSISOFT

uses a BitDefender core engine + EMSISOFT mods

I'm pretty sure it was a false positive just after a signatures update.  Thought I had backed it out but appears I did not.  Rebooted.  EN was gone.

[PinkElephant 6,828]

It would be a rare action to remove an app entirely.

Normally a detection will be quarantined, the user notified - and can redo the movement.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

I've re-installed.  Back to where I had it including new notes.

Still an issue with date format not picking up the Windows 10 "Short" ISO8601 formats when using ALT SHIFT D and CTRL SHIFT D.

Edit:  Haven't tried in browser yet.  Let's see....

No support for time stamps off an icon in the browser note editor.

.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

On 7/7/2022 at 9:53 AM, agsteele said:

The AutoHotKey script was easy to implement - at least I found it to be so.

Haven't had any issues searching inside PDFs with v10 but YMMV.... You may find that some of the issues discussed date back to earlier releases of the program.

Thanks!  Works great on the Windows desktop.  Wish I'd something like this when I coded Paradox applications 30 years  ago.

Now to find the same function inside the Android app.

.

[boneycur 16]

On 8/6/2022 at 6:13 PM, Carl-L-ND said:

Just an update....

Here's the script I used in AutoHotKey to insert a date time stamp in the ISO8601 format.

!d::

FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss

SendInput, %CurrentDateTime%

return

 

outputs >      2022-08-06 13:18:49

 

where !d::  = ALT D

I settled on "ALT D" as ALT D works in v10, v8, Notepad,  and MS Word.

in v10, ALT SHIFT D inserts Date

in v10, CTRL SHIFT D inserts Time

 

CTRL ALT SHIFT D .. worked in v10 but is just too cumbersome for my fingers

CTRL ALT D .............. v10 (I forget); opens Text Formatting in v8 (if I recall correctly);  works in Notepad.

CTRL ALT 0 .............. does NOT work in v10;  works in v8 (CTRL ALT numpad 0/INS key) 

CTRL ALT DOWN ..... does NOT work in v10;  works in v8 (CTRL ALT down arrow) 

 

Some useful URL's

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/insert-date-time-in-any-program-using-keyboard-hotkey/

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/commands/FormatTime.htm
 

https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm

.

 

Evernote Windows 10.49.4 is not following my system Date/Time settings (even though the Evernote Legacy installed on the same computer DOES follow my system settings), so I had to resort to spending an hour to install AutoHotkey, learn how to use it well enough to apply Carl-L-ND's script, and troubleshoot it. Now that it works, I'm happy because I can use it in other places, too, like Gmail. So it makes me feel less pissy about Evernote not properly implementing a feature that worked fine in the Legacy version. 🙂 

In the interest of making Carl's suggestion a little clearer and easier for other non-coders, here are the steps I recommend to create your own date/time hotkey. (Black text is straight from the AutoHotkey help file. Blue is Carl-L-ND's script. Green text is mine.)

Once you have AutoHotkey installed...

1. Right-Click on your desktop.
2. Find "New" in the menu.
3. Click "AutoHotkey Script" inside the "New" menu.
4. Give the script a new name. It must end with a .ahk extension. For example: MyScript.ahk (If you don't immediately see the .ahk file icon when you click New > AutoHotkey Script, then it's probably hidden behind another window on your screen.)
5. Find the newly created file on your desktop and right-click it.
6. Click "Edit Script".
7. A window should have popped up, probably Notepad. If so, SUCCESS!
8. Copy/paste the following into the .ahk file, either above or below the existing text:
    
   !d::
   FormatTime, CurrentDateTime,, yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
   SendInput, %CurrentDateTime%
   return
    
9. Save your work. (Ctrl-S)
10. Double-click the icon or right-click > Run script
11. Open Evernote and click in a note and select Alt-D. Your new date/time stamp should be inserted.

 

[PeterLarsson 2]

Hi Guys,

I wonder if we have a solution to this issue yet? I am both MAC + WIN user and been using EN since 2010 .

Have I understood correctly that the solution to get Evernote to show sorting in the international standard format for date and time: ISO 8601 (as mentioned above) is to use a 3rd party software like Autohotkey? But I do not understand how Evernote could use that to sort notes? I assume that you mean when adding date+timestamp inside a note using shortcuts? 

I have standard setting YYYY-MM-DD in both win and mac - but using Evernote 10x does not show in sorting notes on "created" or "updated" instead it uses  isnon standard formatting: DD/MM/YY.  

So far the only solution I have seen is to use Evernote Legacy? Please correct me if I am wrong. 

 

[PinkElephant 6,828]

EN sorts correctly using the fields created date and change date - up and down.

It is not relevant for the sorting order how the date shows. It even shows like „Yesterday“, but still puts everything into the correct order.

This thread is about how the text inserted by the keyboard shortcut into text fields is formatted. This has nothing to do with the sorting by create and change date.

[PeterLarsson 2]

Hi PinkElephant,

 

Thanks for clarifying. I disagree in the statement that it s not relevant. I think it is a systemic issue. As when using shortcut: (on mac) 

Command + shift + d I get:  "20 January 2023"

This is not standard ISO formatting - as problem stated below. IN old evernote you could choose, for instance: YYYY-MM-DD to avoid confusion accoding to the international standard. As this also spills over to the CREATED/ UPDATED sorting function - not that it is not functional - the sorting works. 

- but I personally would prefer to use system settings from my machine (as older versions + adhering to the international standard). I am sure the team is working on this. I do not suspect that this could be hugely difficult to implement. But who knows? 

On 7/2/2022 at 11:46 PM, C355#90 said:

It appears that Evernote does not obey the device's set region for date format. It instead uses the US format of mm/dd/yyyy. It would be preferable to use my region's format of dd/mm/yyyy. Otherwise how do I know if 7/6/2022 is July 6th or June 7th? Or instead use the international format of yyyy/mm/dd and no one will be  confused. Alternatively use the month mnemonic eg: 7 Jun 2022 or Jun 7 2022.

Looking forward to positive attitudes and solution oriented discussions in the thread. 

[agsteele 2,599]

The date shortcut is a separate issue to the note sorting. The note dates which are used for sorting are stored in the note meta data in ISO format:

Quote

    <created>20230120T145402Z</created>
    <updated>20230120T145552Z</updated>

The shortcut inserts a date into your note in the format determined by your operating system.

So there is a potential display challenge if you want a different format.  Some use a keystroke shortcut creator such as AutoHotkey to overcome that.

[PinkElephant 6,828]

Sorting in EN has nothing to do with the way how text (plain text) is created by a keyboard shortcut.

The way date text created is based on the regional preference set up by the user in the operating system.

I think most users would be annoyed to get dates inserted in a different format than the one they are used to. That a small group of users wishes settings for date formats (and a mob of other settings) is a different question - if EN would honor all these requests, we would end up with a similar piece of bloated shitware as MS Office and the like.

My preference is to keep it lean and efficient.

On the Mac I have the PopClip menu bar helper installed. It allows to set a configurable time stamp into every place. The difference is that this works the same everywhere, no matter which app I am using.

[Martin Maiers 15]

Evernote Legacy (Mac) has an option in the settings to set the format for Insert Date.
 

I just got a new laptop and tried the latest non-Legacy app and I'm surprised to see this hasn't been fixed yet.

Short-term Solution: install Evernote Legacy app.

Long-term Solution: open another ticket? ask Evernote to use the system date format (throughout)? peer pressure? what is Evernote's biggest competitor?

 

M

[PinkElephant 6,828]

EN v10 uses the system settings for the region your Mac is located in.

No separate setting for the date format - just go ahead and use the feedback option to send your opinion about it to EN staff.

[PeterLarsson 2]

On 1/20/2023 at 4:55 PM, PinkElephant said:

Sorting in EN has nothing to do with the way how text (plain text) is created by a keyboard shortcut.

The way date text created is based on the regional preference set up by the user in the operating system.

I think most users would be annoyed to get dates inserted in a different format than the one they are used to. That a small group of users wishes settings for date formats (and a mob of other settings) is a different question - if EN would honor all these requests, we would end up with a similar piece of bloated shitware as MS Office and the like.

My preference is to keep it lean and efficient.

On the Mac I have the PopClip menu bar helper installed. It allows to set a configurable time stamp into every place. The difference is that this works the same everywhere, no matter which app I am using.

 

I disagree  with this statement. I do not think that you know that it has "NOTHING" to do with how the datestamp is generated. That implies that you know thew code, which I assume you do not know. The datestamp works perfect as designed in the legacy app on same machine, but not in EN 10x.  I do not think that most users agree with you. I think most users like EN to follow the system settings - i.e. in my case: YYYY-MM-DD 
Please also try to refrain from unnecessary language as cursing and similar comparision to other companies - I do not think it brings this discussion forward and to be honest it does not invite for constructive solutions. 

But I do appriciate that you take time out of your day to comment and clearly you have helped a lot of people. 

So far I have notices PopClip and Autohotkeys as workaround for adding timestamp according to both standard and my local system setting of: YYYY-MM-DD 

thanks for this. We will continue to move forward and hope that  we get a native solution

[James C. 2]

More than a year later, and it's the same thing on macOS and the online version.

What's most annoying is that the legacy client had no such issue.

It's almost like the developers no longer care about people or their data.

[PinkElephant 6,828]

There is nothing annoying about the new client using the regional setting of the host computer. This works, I get the German formatting on entering date and time.

Anything beyond is "nice to have". As any setting means the app is charged with another if/then/else term, leading to complexity and probably lagginess, v10 development was focussed on a unified UI without a lot of options. It is (thankfully) no copy of legacy - the permanent comparison is off the point. Take it as it is, if you want something changed for the future, send feedback or contact support - but stop living in the past.

[James C. 2]

9 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

There is nothing annoying about the new client using the regional setting of the host computer. This works, I get the German formatting on entering date and time.

Anything beyond is "nice to have". As any setting means the app is charged with another if/then/else term, leading to complexity and probably lagginess, v10 development was focussed on a unified UI without a lot of options. It is (thankfully) no copy of legacy - the permanent comparison is off the point. Take it as it is, if you want something changed for the future, send feedback or contact support - but stop living in the past.

Things working for one user does not imply they work universally. Perhaps I'm confusing the creation and modification dates with user-entered dates. If so, many apologies. I'm well-aware that I might be wrong.

The idea that “legacy is off the point” is preposterous. Software I've been using for over a decade continues to work more slowly and with less functionality than the legacy client. You may be enjoying the time of your life with your setup. My 11 year old 15" Retina MacBook Pro  had better response times / searches / and interoperability than the current version does on my 2023 14"" MacBook Pro. My fibre internet 500MBS is not the issue insofar as the data all residing in the cloud is a bottleneck.

I'm  genuinely pleased that Evernote works fine for you, Pink Elephant. I like the company and the idea. I subscribe to keep it going. But I'm not going to pretend that the last few years have been a positive step in the development of something which was clearly superior for my needs in the past.

Attached is a screenshot of a note I just made, then changed the creation date to 2022-10-09 for illustration. I assure you the localization of my computer is not US-format and that every application except Evernote respects the date format.

I use a text expansion utility, TextExpander, to make sure that dates are entered in yyyy-mm-dd since it is literally beyond the capability of Evernote's latest version to customize the date format. And "in the name of simplicity" is no way to justify removing international language support in a notekeeping application.

If I offended you, Pink Elephant, I apologize. It was never my intent. I want better for Evernote users. I'd like the company to stay in business.

[Carl-L-ND 53]

🙁  As I have posted here before, I support the demand to have   yyyy-mm-dd   supported inherent to Evernote as a date format.  I don't support Pink Elephant's position on the issue.

It is just easier to use yyyy-mm-dd to sort information from most recent to oldest especially with files with the Windows File Manager.

.

 

[PinkElephant 6,828]

Sorting inside of EN works no matter how a date is shown by the client, based on the location settings. The system sorts dates numerically, not by the shown characters.

Can you explain what is your use case for a date displayed in EN with Windows file manager (Explorer ?) ?

[VincentC 98]

YYMMDD formatting helps for a user like me who organizes notes by using naming conventions.  I myself am perfectly content to use Text Expander for this purpose, though so, for me, flexible date formatting is pretty far down my list of "would be nice to have" features.    

 

Vinnie

[AlbertR 319]

10 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Can you explain what is your use case for a date displayed in EN

Simply clearness: I/we want to define/have a fixed format. Display like

is a mess (*). In larger note lists I want to see the year. And I do not want to think about the current date if I see "gerade jetzt" (or whatever EN uses to talk with me in any slang). Is it really so hard to have a setting like "dd.mm.yy hh:mm" (or "yy.mm.dd hh:mm") to define timestamps the same way in all cases? 

20 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

As any setting means the app is charged with another if/then/else term, leading to complexity and probably lagginess

Don't use such ridiculous arguments. Such a setting is neither complex nor slow to compute.

Current formatting features (no format setting but really complex if-then-else terms to find whether it is "Gerade jetzt", "today" and how to format the date in which column) are much more difficult to handle.

(*) This is the same list in "my" format:

decide yourself which is more useful 😉