Hello,
I'm trying to add the current date and some text to the Title field in a pdf. I've got no problem doing that, but the date appears like 20140716. Is there a way to format the date so it takes the form: Wednesday, July 16, 2014?
Hi James,
To make the dates come out in a specific format, use the -d option. In your case you probably want -d "%A, %B %e, %Y"
To add some text and the create datetime of the file in the title of the file, you can now use the following:
exiftool -d "%A, %B %e, %Y" "-Title<$Title Some Text – $CreateDate – Some more text" <file>
(on a Mac, use single quotes).
Hope this helps,
Hayo
Just one point to add. You can use the Now tag if you want the current date/time. So Hayo's command would be:
exiftool -d "%A, %B %e, %Y" "-Title<$Title Some Text – $Now – Some more text" <file>
- Phil
Thank you Hayo and Phil for your responses.
I tried using the command with a slight modification (removing $Title):
exiftool -d "%A, %B %e, %Y" "-Title<Some Text – $Now – Some more text" *.pdf
And I get:
Some Text ? B Y ? Some more text
Any ideas as to why I'd be getting this result?
Are you on windows or a Mac? On a mac, you should use single quotes (at least for the second part). On windows the problem may be the endash (–), a unicode charater, I used in my example. It may be that windows does not support those properly (hence the question marks). That doesn't explain the B and Y, but it may be related...
Hi Hayo,
I'm on Windows, and it looks like that's why I was having the issues. Removing the endashes helped. I also used double per cent signs, and that seemed to work.
Now, if I use:
exiftool -d "%%A, %%B %%d, %%Y" "-Title<Some Text $Now Some more text" *.pdf
I get:
Some Text Friday, July 18, 2014 Some more text
Thank you very much for your help!
You must be running from a .bat file for the double "%" to be necessary.
It is very difficult to give accurate advice without knowing details like this (and your system).
- Phil
Yes, you're correct Phil, I am running the command through a batch file. Sorry I didn't include that. I'd forgotten it makes a difference. I can appreciate it makes things a lot more difficult without all the information, and I'll try to remember to include everything next time. Thanks again to both of you for your help and patience.