Hi Andreas,

It was actually easier than that. The time stamps in the old system were in epoch format, so when I created the new record, (my conversion program was written in Python), I simply formatted that value in the format Stefan pointed out below, and defined the Orig Date field as text. Then I was able to munge the logbook file with 2 global editor commands, and it worked perfectly. Thanks again!

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

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.

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

"Date" must be on the first line on each entry and it must be named "Date".

Stefan

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 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
 

I'm converting our on-call logbook, with 25 years of history, to elog. Is there a way to override the current date/time for the Date field with the creation date/time of the original logbook entry?