Is there an appropriate supported metadata field for the "original date" of a document scanned to a PDF?
For example, a letter may be written on 12th June 2004 and that paper letter may later on, say on 4th March 2010, be scanned in to a PDF file. Is there a supported metadata field in the PDF file where it would be appropriate to store the original date of 12th June 2004?
For image files - e.g. JPEG - there is an EXIF "date taken" field (which is additional to, and can be different from, the "date digitized" field) so I suppose I am looking for the equivalent for a PDF
Just to be clear, is PDF Properties - pdf:CreationDate designed for the "original date" of the paper document, or is it the date of scanning - i.e. when the data in the PDF file itself was first created ("date digitized")?
It is set by, in my case, by Acrobat to be the date the PDF file was generated. This is distinct from the file's creation or modification date.
Acrobat (or any scanning software) would have no idea about the paper document's "original date", unless there was a means to input such a value during PDF creation time.
True with one proviso. If the user knows the information that they want to use for the "original date", they could change the metadata. But, and it is a big but, they need to be able to edit that metadata within Acrobat, or whatever software they use to create the PDF file. If that is not possible, then DOpus will probably have little success in the same task.
A more usual approach when tackling this issue is to forget about metadata and to use a more widely understood, and manageable technique.
One alternative that has come up here, and elsewhere, many times in the past is to use a date prefix for these files. Today, for example, you would create all files with the name beginning 2011-06-01.....
If a letter created today was originally produced some time ago, then just use that earlier date as the prefix. With the right software, you could even copy dates from letters and generate the required prefix.
Such files are easily found and manipulated in DOpus and much other software that knows nothing about metadata.
However and wherever you could use the info - it doesn't seem to me that Opus has access to the "pdf:CreationDate" metadata that MrC mentioned. I don't see it in Windows file properties dialog either. So... that most likely leaves you with a need to use something else to actually SET such metadata. If it is standard metadata that ALL PDF's are supposed to be able to support, then perhaps you can ask GPsoft to add support for it. That said, some additional suggestion on top of what the others here have shared:
Opus can access the Created Date for word docs through the fileinfo control code: {doccreateddate}
So... if you are aware of any COMMAND LINE tools with which you could both convert the word doc to PDF as well as set the resulting pdf files metadata, you could then do this all through an Opus action (button, context menu, etc) using the ability to do ~other things with Opus' rename 'script' feature. I.e. you could pass the {doccreateddate} of the original word doc to an Opus rename script that could then use that info to call the req'd command line tools to convert to pdf, then update the pdf with the old docs {doccreateddate} metadata info.
Similarly, if michaelkenward's idea is sufficient, you could just rename your word docs to insert the {doccreateddate} into the filename somewhere, and then at least have that in the name of the converted pdf file as well.
[quote="michaelkenward"]A more usual approach when tackling this issue is to forget about metadata and to use a more widely understood, and manageable technique.
One alternative that has come up here, and elsewhere, many times in the past is to use a date prefix for these files. Today, for example, you would create all files with the name beginning 2011-06-01.....[/quote]
Indeed this is one way of doing it. Is there any way in DOpus of prompting for a date using a calender-like selection panel allowing you to choose a date just by clicking, and then inserting that date at the beginning of the file name?
[quote="michaelkenward"]One alternative that has come up here, and elsewhere, many times in the past is to use a date prefix for these files. Today, for example, you would create all files with the name beginning 2011-06-01.....
If a letter created today was originally produced some time ago, then just use that earlier date as the prefix. With the right software, you could even copy dates from letters and generate the required prefix.[/quote]
Does anyone know of such software - i.e. software that can scan a PDF document looking for a date (which could be in a variety of formats - 02/06/12 02/06/2012 2nd June 2012 etc.) and add the date in the standard yyyy mm dd format to the file name?
Doesn't make sense to theorize on potential solutions for you without knowing what exactly you want to do... IMHO, if you convert a word doc with a valid document "Created" date value, then whatever tool you use to convert it to PDF should preserve that date as the "Created" date for the resulting PDF files metadata; at least optionally.
That said, I'm just guessing why you asked the question... there are certainly "tools" out there to do all kinds of things, but exactly what you're trying to do will influence the appropriateness of one tool vs another. For instance, (google is your friend):
...but who's to say you can use either of these to do whatever it is you're really after? If all you really want to do is set a PDF files "Created" data metadata to whatever the original word doc was (assuming your conversion tool is not doing it for you already - which seems a reasonable thing to expect a converter to do), then you could probably use the 'rename script' technique I mentioned earlier along with one of these tools to make that happen.
Oh... don't know why I thought it had to do with pulling the date from some original word doc, but reading back I guess you never even mentioned that. Sorry about all that...
In any case, one of the tools I mentioned will probably give you a way to SET the scanned documents pdf metadata field for the create date... and you could wrap it with a rename script to ALSO rename the file to include that date stamp.
Since it's a paper document you're scanning, there's nothing to refer to in order to "get" the date, so I guess that's why you asked about some sort of calendar dialog. There's no calendar dialog... but you could use a series of Opus input dialogs in order to get year, month, and day - which you can then use to rename the file and set the metadata. For instance:
@set date = {Rc|Select the YEAR in which the document was created|2012=2012+2011=2011+2010=2010}
@set date = {$date}-{Rc|Select the MONTH in which the document was created|January=01+February=02+March=03}
@set date = {$date}-{Rc|Select the DAY on which the document was created|01=01+02=02+03=03+04=04+05=05+06=06}
{Rs|Here is the date you selected|{$date}}
This example just shows that you can prompt for each element of a date string, stick them all together and then do ~something~ with that completed date string. If this is useful and you want to script the use of that info to rename and/or set the metadata with one of those tools, just shout...