Date Stamp
Date Stamp enables PDF documents to be ‘stamped’ or ‘watermarked’ with a date/time and text message when they are printed to any printer from Acrobat or Adobe Reader†. This is an ideal solution for organisations that need to keep track of the date that a document was printed, so that individuals can see whether it is up to date, or for how long it is valid. Ideal for use in regulated environments, it is widely in use in aerospace and pharmaceutical industries.
† A fault in Acrobat 8 meant that Date Stamp only worked with PostScript printers in that version, but this was fixed in Acrobat 9.
Custom Stamps
The text message(s) printed on each page can be customised by the system administrator (or user). Each text string is called a stamp (although it can be a watermark), and can be made up of multiple text lines. Multiple stamps can be defined for printing on each page. The following properties can be specified for the stamps:
- Text stamp location (in the margins or across centre of page)
- Alignment (left, centre, right)
- Font and size (subject to system availability)
- Colour
- The text line(s) of the stamp
If Date Stamp is left un-customised the string ‘Printed on <date> <time>’ (e.g. ‘Printed on 19 Sep 2018 09:45’) is printed at the bottom of every page.
If Date Stamp is customised with user-defined stamps, the stamps can include variables to be replaced at print-time. These variables include:
- The current date (format can be user-specified)
- The date in n days time (e.g. useful if valid for 7 days, 28 days etc)
- The current time (format can be user-specified)
- The login name of the user currently logged on
- The page number of the page being printed, and the number of pages being printed (e.g. so could have ‘Page 1 of 6’)
- Any system environment variable (e.g. TEMP or PATH)
- A text field from the registry (Windows only)
See the support pages for examples of custom stamps.
Advanced Features
There are other advanced options to provide additional control to the stamping process:
- Only stamp files from a supplied list of directories or web addresses (ideal for intranets)
- Do not stamp files from a supplied list of directories or web addresses (ideal for intranets)
- Obtain the current date and time from a specified server (Windows only)
- Overlay or watermark the page with the stamp
Latest Release Notes
This release also fixes a problem with stamps at the top and bottom of the page not always showing when the shrink to fit option is enabled during printing.
¹ See the Change History section in the Date Stamp Online Guide for a list of all changes.
² Note that customers using Adobe Reader 10.0.* will need to upgrade to Adobe Reader 10.1 as there was a fault with version 10.0.* resulting in documents not printing as expected.
