What setting should I use to make the date random and never change? Currently it is set to today's date and it updates everyday. I just want to set it to like June 24 and have that be the permanent date without changing. Do I just make it any character setting without using one of the date attributes? Sorry if I am using the wrong term if I say "attributes." I know there are several date settings and don't know which one to use (if any) if I want to use a random (non-changing) date.
Depends - what are you trying to achieve? You could hard code so that it stays as a fixed date or it could be a variable that is set once until changed or it could be variable that floats along with the current date.
Here's what I did. I used Creation Date, which gave me an earlier (default) date, but I hard coded Creation Date by deleting the Creation Date and hard coding a future date into Creation Date. Will that work? I appears that it has thus far.
Sorry! Thought I made it clear. I want a date without using a variable. I just want to add a date that doesn't change. My publish date is June 14, so I obviously don't need Current Date or Creation Date, since Creation Date backdates the Frame file. I manually changed Creation Date to June 14, 2022, which I assume removed the Creation Date varaible. I just want to enter a date with it changing everyday, which the Current Date variable does. Is that clear enough?
Don't use the Creation or Modification date variable. Both could change. (The creation date would change if doing a save-as.)
Create a user variable and simply enter in the date you want it to be, in whatever format you want the date in. Edit the user variable if you ever want to change the date. (You may have to re-sync your variables between documents.) The user variable can be changed in the Body view--you don't have to go to the master pages to change it.
David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
So just type it in on the master page. However, a USER variable won't automatically change, which seems to be your issue. User variables only change when the FM user purposedly changes it.
You are making it more complicated than it really is.
David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)
One clarification needed here is: does a text string that merely looks like a date suffice?
Or is the object intended to carry some meta\semantics that would tag it as a date in the output workflow (such as to XML or HTML)?
A document-wide datum that can be declared once, used everywhere, and updated manually, can be done in multiple ways, including Variable, Xref, Text Inset. Benefits and hazards for each.
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