As many people already have, we are scanning our prints into a .pdf file and putting them out on the network for users to access.

When we made paper copies of prints, we noted that they were a limited life document and gave them an expiration date via a stamp.

With Word or Excel documents we have a footer that reads, "Printed Copies are uncontrolled 7 days after: (Word inserts today's date)"

Does anyone know of a way we could do this in Adobe? We want to get away from stamping things, and let the software do it for us.

As many people already have, we are scanning our prints into a .pdf file and putting them out on the network for users to access.

When we made paper copies of prints, we noted that they were a limited life document and gave them an expiration date via a stamp.

With Word or Excel documents we have a footer that reads, "Printed Copies are uncontrolled 7 days after: (Word inserts today's date)"

Does anyone know of a way we could do this in Adobe? We want to get away from stamping things, and let the software do it for us.
I don't know if it's possible from within Acrobat, but I do know that there are third-party plugins available, such as the one here:http://www.artspdf.com/welcome_aerialist_stamping.asp.

This looks promising!
Thanks!

This looks promising!
Thanks!
That was just a suggestion; I haven't used it and I can't recommend it specifically. Google.

With Word or Excel documents we have a footer that reads, "Printed Copies are uncontrolled 7 days after: (Word inserts today's date)"



We did the same thing in Adobe. There is an option for a text box (or text, I believe?) to only be visible when the document is printed.

When are documents were printed we had statement along the lines of "Printed copies are for reference only, it is the users responsibility to ensure that a printed copy is the current revision" That was written diagonally across the sheet in gray.

Thanks, e....
We'll give it a try.

Hi, Rosie.
These instructions may not be for exactly what you're looking to do, but you may be able to modify the script to suit your needs:

1) Generate a PDF document and select "Tools>Advanced Editing>Forms>Text Field Tool" from the menu bar.

2) The mouse pointer will change to the form of a crosshair. Use the pointer to draw a box where you would like the date to appear.

3) In the "Text Field Properties" dialog box that appears, name the textbox "datebox" and assign any properties such as appearance and visibility and close the window.

4) Set the action for the textbox by selecting "Advanced>JavaScript>Set Document Actions" from the menu bar.

5) Select "Document Will Print" from the list and choose the "Edit" button. Enter the following 4 lines of script in the Editor:

var myfield=getField("datebox");
var date=new Date();
date=util.printd("mmm dd yyyy, h:MM tt", date);
myfield.value="Printed: " + date;

(Note that in line 3, there is no "e" in "printd" and in line 4 there is a space between the colon and the close quote).

6) After you print the document, the textbox will be populated with the date and time that the document was printed. (The red area you will see is only visible when editing the textbox.)

We did this for a while, and if I recall correctly, I had to place a textbox to the left of the datebox. The text box said something like "Valid only on" and the datebox completed the sentence.

Hope this helps!

This sounds "doable" - let us know if it works for you, Rosie. This could be very helpful to many folks struggling to control distribution of documents.

Is this doable on ALL versions of Adobe or only more recent versions?

Is this doable on ALL versions of Adobe or only more recent versions?

Good question. I don't know the answer. We use Acrobat Professional 6.0.