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.

You have to manually manipulate the logbook files YYMMDDa.log where you find the date at the top like:

MID@$: 1
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2020 15:38:09 +0300 <==== change here !!!!
Author: Stefan
Type: General
Category: 
Subject: CURL test
Attachment: 
Encoding: plain
========================================
Text body
 

Hi Stefan, thanks! Does the Date field need to be the first field in each entry? I can see adding a "termpory" field called "Orig Date", upload the old entries, then edit the file(s), delete the Date field, and rename Orig Date to Date. Will that work?

Hi Stefan, thanks! Does the Date field need to be the first field in each entry? I can see adding a "termpory" field called "Orig Date", upload the old entries, then edit the file(s), delete the Date field, and rename Orig Date to Date. Will that work?

You could transform your entries into the ELOG file format (either XML or CSV) and then use the import function. That would upload the correct dates from your entries.

If you use the "Orig Date" trick you've proposed, you'll see that datetime fields are stored as seconds of the epoch (since 1.1.1970). Not so easy to copy and paste them, but you can convert them with a script.

Cheers, Andreas

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for your input! After a little testing, it appears that if I make "Orig Date" the first field, it will fall under the Date field in the logbook file. I can then do a global delete of Date:, and replace Orig Date: with Date:, leaving it as the first field in the entry. Then I can delete the Orig Date field.

Hi David,
correct. And in addition you will need to convert "Orig Date" from seconds-of-the-epoch into a properly formated date string (see example below from Stefan) ...

Andreas