Date Stamp

Acrobat and Adobe Reader versions 8.* had a printing fault affecting output to non-PostScript printers. This meant that Date Stamp only worked for PostScript printers with Acrobat or Adobe Reader versions 8.*. This problem was known by Adobe and was fixed in Acrobat 9. A patch version of Acrobat 8 was not provided.

We therefore recommend that existing or new customers continue to use Acrobat or Adobe Reader versions 7.* or earlier, or upgrade to Acrobat or Adobe Reader versions 9.* or later.

Start Adobe Reader (or Acrobat, depending on what you are using) and check that the Help | About Plug-ins | Date Stamp menu item exists. If it does, click on that menu item to check the version number, date, and serial number.

You can configure Date Stamp to print your own custom stamps by editing the dstamp.ini file, located in the same directory as the Date Stamp Acrobat plug-in, dstamp.api. Read the Date Stamp On-line Guide for details of how to specify stamps in dstamp.ini, and how to test them.

A stamp might not appear on printed output for several reasons:

• Date Stamp is not installed, or not configured correctly.
• The PDF contains a bitmap/scanned image covering the page (see next question).
• The PDF is within one of the excluded directories/URLs which you have asked not to be stamped.

Versions of Date Stamp prior to version 2.14 printed stamps as “watermarks” so a bitmap or scanned image will print over the top of it, thus hiding it. Date Stamp version 2.14 and later prints stamps as an overlay.

If you have this problem, we would recommend upgrading to the latest version.

If you cannot upgrade at present, try turning on the “overlay” and/or “clip” options for PostScript printing (see the Date Stamp On-line Guide for details). For non-PostScript printing you need to clip the PDFs in advance so that a white border is available for the stamp.