Entering Created/Modified DateTime

[wfaulk 0]

Entering a datetime into the Created Date and Modified Date fields requires pretty strict formatting, but still has some weirdnesses.

 

DateTime entries display in this format:

• July 18, 2015 at 6:55 PM

You seem to be able to enter datetimes in these formats:

• Month Day
• Month Day Year
• Month Day Year Time
• Month Day Time
• Time

Unentered pieces of data remain the same.  Commas are irrelevant; you seem to be able to put one between the day and year if you want, or not.  You can also put one between the month and the day with no ill effect. You can put "at" between the day and the time as you see fit.

 

If you enter something that it doesn't like, it just ignores the change and pops back to whatever was set before.

 

Time is a truly weird beast.  Hours and minutes are separated by colons.  If you try to also enter seconds, your entry is ignored.  You are required to enter "AM" or "PM" (upper or lower case, or even mixed), but the hours field can range from 0 to 24.  If you enter "PM", that apparently means "add 12 hours", because if you enter "16:00pm", it shows the new time as 4am.  You can also enter "24:59am", which means 12:59am.  If you include a date with your crazy rollover time, it also increases the date to the next day.  So "January 1 2015 23:30pm" is accepted and shows "January 2, 2015 at 11:30 AM".

 

Personally, I want to be able to enter "2015-07-18 18:55:32" (or something similar that alpha-sorts and date-sorts the same way) and have it interpret that as "July 18, 2015 at 6:55pm".

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

Personally, I want to be able to enter "2015-07-18 18:55:32" (or something similar that alpha-sorts and date-sorts the same way) and have it interpret that as "July 18, 2015 at 6:55pm".

 

The format that you enter the dates into the date fields has no impact on how date sorting is done.

Sorting by date is always done properly using the internal date.

[wfaulk 0]

Sorting by date is always done properly using the internal date.

The format that you enter the dates into the date fields has no impact on how date sorting is done.

 

True, but I'm copying dates from other software where that's not true.  Right now, in order to transfer dates, I have to translate my existing date string to the format that Evernote wants.  I can start using a different date string on the input side, but I don't really want to use one that will mess up sorting there.

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

You can consider using a keyboard macro tool like Keyboard Maestro which could take the date format as you like it from your source and reformat it into the format required by Evernote.

 

In fact, you could even take it one further step and change EN Mac date using AppleScript.

 

BTW, if you have the date as text already in the EN Note, then the Applescript method would work very well.  I do that now.