Hi Michael,

Elog purists, look away now.

There is an "official" way to do this, which is to have fields for entry date (so can be in the past), but the yymmdda.log file will be of the date and time you make the entry.  This is in the offical documentation.

If you are not bothered by the ID number being out of sequence (and elog does not really mind, although it occasionally throws a hissy fit/throws its toys out of the pram, which a restart sorts out), but you are one who wants the date of the entry in the log file to also be in the past, skipping the entry date fields issue, it's perfectly do-able.  So long as you can access the yymmdda.log files.

What I, and some others, do is to create a new entry now (for ease, the first entry of the day, but that's not critical), then go to the log files, and with an editor open today's file, find the entry, and edit the day, date and if necessary time; I always set the time as post 22:00, as code for an edited late entry.  I also then cut-and-paste the entry into the log file for the day it should have been entered in (creating it if necessary, in linux make sure the permissions are correct, specifically the user).

If you have attachments, and want those also to reflect the date, you'll need to edit the Attachments section of the elog entry headers (format is obvious), and also rename the attachment files in the directory.

I've not tried an ID number being other than an integer, I guess it would not work.  ID numbers not being in sequence with the date doesn't seem to matter.  Messing with ID numbers can have a number of consequences, such as elog running away, burning CPU time etc (looking for a previous entry that does not exist), or rogue listings of a entry ID no./# 0 (looking for a later entry that does not exist).

One caveat; I use Linux, and on elog 2.9.2.  Later elogs and Windows may have a different reaction to what I've written above.

Elog purists can now look again.