Author Topic: meta field date of origin --- rename  (Read 6199 times)

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TSchneider75

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meta field date of origin --- rename
« on: December 30, 2011, 05:55:30 PM »
Dear PDFExplorer users

I hope you can help me. I found my way here cause I got a problem with the dates of my PDF.
I had to reinstall my Windows 7 and afterwards my PDFs had the wrong date in the explorer view of Windows.
So, I thought well.... there are and is meta data in a PDF as it is in Mp3 oder JPG...

My hope is now that PDFExplorer can help me. If not something else. But I am better asking here before I buy. I use
only Nuance Paperport PRO since years to work with my PDF. And until now I was happy. But now I can not sort
PDF in directory anymore by date...
Well I can but it does not help since the new Windows 7 or my backup tool (Ghost 15) or sync tool Sugarsync
made my PDF unsortable by date. Why? Cause all have the same date?!?!

My question is now if there is still the original date of creation and may be alteration/change in the meta data (and I think no normal tool should change something there...) ---> Can I rename my PDF with the help of PDFExplorer?

meta field: creation date    ---> rename ---> [creation date][old name]


Then I sort easily by file name.


Thank you

RTT

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Re: meta field date of origin --- rename
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2011, 08:14:48 PM »
To accomplish that you could use the rename batch tool.
But the date type metadata fields can't be used directly, to compose the renaming schema. You will need to create first a custom grid layout, and add to it a dynamic calculated column with a formula such as:
FormatDate('mm-dd-yyyy hhnnss',Date(CD))
This will add a column to te grid where the PDF creation date is shown with the format defined in that formula.
To use that column data, in the batch tool renaming schema, just refer to it with [D1]
For the [CreationDate][OldFilename] schema you want, use:
[D1][F]

Another possibility is to export the Filename and Creation Date columns to an external file, and then use a script to parse that file, and rename the files accordingly, or even use that data to set the files system creation/modification date to the same values of the metadata ones.

But, if you only need this to sort tasks, and because you are using Window 7, you can use the PDF-ShellTools property handler to show that PDF Creation Date metadata field as a column in Windows Explorer, and then sort by that column.
Then you can also create a little script to rename the files, and use the data of that column to compose the new name.
The script example at this post is for a different task, but can be adapted easily.

TSchneider75

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Re: meta field date of origin --- rename
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2012, 09:40:58 PM »
Thank you for your detailed explanations. I will try my best with the 1st suggestion.