The Problem
As one example —
When new users are moving from other applications to Anytype, it is likely that they will be creating objects, to replicate the material from their previously used application (e.g. Google Docs).
These can include notes, tasks, etc. At the moment, the “Creation Date” relation will always show the date on which the object was created; this cannot be changed.
If a user created a Google Doc in 2019, but decided to move over to to Anytype, there is currently no way to change the “Creation Date” relation to have the original (i.e. 2019) date: the user is forced to disregard the relation, or instead create another one for all of their objects.
The Solution
It would be ideal for users to be able to manually change the creation date of an object.
Additional Context
N/A
Thank you for reading, hope you have an amazing day and happy holidays!
I actually think there should be an immutable Creation date Relation even when stuff is imported. For imported stuff, a distinction between Import date and Creation date might be helpful, where the Creation date is set to the creation date of the imported Object if such information is shared in the export, and the Import date to be set to today (or the date of the import).
While I agree in a lot of cases there should be a difference between file creation and entry creation.
There are some types of documents to where the “Creation” of the object is used as part of the object. For example, journaling. Problem is there is no easy way to automatically have a date entered on creation of an entry.
I would like the creation date relation of a Note to be editable.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
When you open a note and click on relations, you should be able to click on the value associated with Creation Date and change it. There could also be an ability to revert to the original creation date.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
If you are importing (or copying over) notes from a different program, it would be useful for creation dates to still be meaningful.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
I have considering using Last Modified Date, but then my note order gets messed up if I modify them after the creation date. I have also considered adding a custom Date relation, but this feels unnecessary.
I would also like to change the creation date. For my use case the proposed fix is not a fix at all. I am planing to “import” data from analog sources as well, e.g. journals. Also it is impossible for anytype to offer importers for every possible data source. So the possibility to change the creation date is still important. I don’t want to introduce a new relation just for this.
@shrippen While this isn’t necessarily the solution you’re looking for, if you want a workaround for now you could create text files for all the journal pages you want to import, set the creation and modified dates for those (that might take some googling to figure out depending on your OS), and then import those files into anytype.
I would also love to see this happen. I just started using Anytype and I have to manually transfer couple of old handwritten journals. I would really love to get the creation date to original dates. I could set up a new relation as you said, but then I will have to keep doing it for later notes that I would make as well, and that defeats the whole purpose of having one in the first place.
+1 on this. I know that if we think about a (OS) file system, creation date is a HARD FACT. But I think AnyType is a different kind of thing. I use it to track meetings, among lots of other things. If I can’t capture the meeting right in the moment, and I do it the day after, I will have a wrong creation date.
Yes, I can add a Date field, but then I need to keep track of that one, too, where most of my creation dates will be equal to (creation date). It would help if the Date field can be configured with a default value of (creation date).
And if I decide to add the new date field now, I would like the option to retroactively take the default value of (creation date), instead of having to update 300+ meetings by hand.
I’d love to be able to correct the modified date, and ideally the created date as well. In Evernote’s good old days, that was possible and indeed allowed three use cases that I find important and can’t elegantly resolve otherwise:
Use case 1: I just corrected minor content details such as updating a link, without wanting to record this change as a „new major release“ by updating the modified date. „Minor change“ is an important feature in many wikis etc.
Use case 2: I just wanted to apply some highlighting to the text without actually wanting to edit the note’s content itself.
Use case 3: as someone said here earlier, I’m just late with a note that I would normally have taken on the respective date, eg meeting minutes or journaling, and I want to have it as if I had created it right in the moment, in order to designate the note to the date it was meant for.
In all three cases, Evernote used to allow correcting the date field. That was brilliant.
My alternative approach is to write the correct date into the text. But obviously this is really a lousy workaround.
Also, as someone said, manually maintaining an extra „sort“ date relation means to maintain 97% redundant data for the 3% where a correction is really needed (and, if this were to remain the only way, its value should at least default to ‚today,‘ to avoid missing or false data here).
I made a request some days ago that would fulfill your demand, without the technical problems a real edit of the creation date would cause for the programmers: