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Question

Why is this so complicated, insert today's date

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 2, 2019
2 replies
7045 views

Had no idea something so simple would end up being so complicated. I have a pdf file I created in the latest version of Acrobat Pro DC, it has a signature field and a text box next to that for the date. I will be gathering the signature using Adobe Sign. All I want is for the text box to populate with today's date when the form is opened. All the help I've been able to find says I need to add javascript to the Page Open event but I can't seem to find that in Acrobat DC. Even the Adobe help page for this seems to describe an older version of Acrobat so it's not helping me much. I'm just frustrated with how complicated this is ending up, why doesn't Adobe have a simple function to add today's date on a form?

PDF forms

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JR Boulay

Community Expert

All this is useless, a signature is necessarily dated, otherwise it is worthless.

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

P

Paweł5E58

Participating Frequently

this is obvious
but my form is a copy of a paper document where the "date" field is and therefore I have to put it on the electronic form

rayek.elfin

Legend

It's not that hard: just put the following script in your document level javascript:

var dateToday = util.printd("mmmm dd, yyyy", new Date());

this.getField("currentDate").value = dateToday;

Make sure your date field is set to read-only, and named "currentDate".

The problem with Acrobat Pro is that its user interface has changed dramatically over the past 5 years, and many tutorials, while the javascript still works, are no longer valid in regards to where things can be found.

In Acrobat DC, you have the Tools view, where you will find the JavaScript tool. You then can add it to the Right Hand Panel. The JavaScript tool has the javascript options.

Thom Parker

Community Expert

You'll need to verify this strategy by following it through the entire Sign process. Forms sent for Sign are handled differently than regular forms.

And there is another issue. This document script will always set the date, every time the document is opened. Is this what you want to happen? Or do you want the date only to be set when the user fills the form?

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

rayek.elfin

Legend

Right your are! How about this then? Tested it, and it no longer throws an error when the document is opened after it is signed. It checks for the signature status.

var dateToday = util.printd("mmmm dd, yyyy", new Date());

var signedStatus = event.target.getField("signatureControl").signatureInfo().status;

if (signedStatus == 0) {

this.getField("Date1").value = dateToday;

}

The signature field must be named "signatureControl". Or change the name to whichever you require.

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