Tis the season to play with Custom Properties again. It is relatively easy to place the date a document was created in Custom Properties. Just type in $PRP:"SW-Created Date" and the date the document was created will appear as a custom property. Now what if you want this date in another format?
First of all the documentation in help (Linking Notes to Document Properties) states, "The formats of the dates are language and region dependent. For details, see Start/Settings/Control Panel/Regional Settings/Date on your computer." This is all well and good except there are two types of date formats that can be set (on XP). There is a long and a short date format. SW uses the long format. I want the short format (mm/dd/yy) in a custom property. In addition, SW tacks on the time which I don't want. The documentation should really read, "The formats of the dates are language and region dependent. For details, see Start/Settings/Control Panel/Regional Settings/Date on your computer for the long format date. In addition SolidWorks appends the time in the specified time format." This setup may be different on different MicroSoft OS but I don't think so. I would really like the short format date without time appended for some applications.
So why can't I apply some kind of format to what appears in a custom property value? Perhaps the Format(string,format) VB function could be made to work. Perhaps in the properties.txt file a field could be added for text/number/date/truefalse and another field with a format template for the same. ==>Perhaps properties.txt could become properties.xml with a whole bunch of user configurable properties including word wrap, font, size, etc.