Getting used to 2016 from 2010 - Date Formatting Question

[dsmall]

Hi all, we have recently transitioned from 2010 to 2016 and still getting used to some of the differences, looking for feedback about the date formatting.

I have a shape that includes the "Creation Date/Time" field.  That has worked fine while in Visio but when I save or export as a PDF that field in the PDF updates with the current Date, but stays the same in Visio.  In 2010 this was not an issue, is there any way to fix this or is this the expected behaviour?

Thanks!

[wapperdude]

Haven't tried this before, but, get same thing with V2019.  But, I'm not convinced it's a bug, just don't know how to prove it.  It occurs to me that the creation date in the PDF reflects the creation date of the PDF itself, not the date of the Visio file.  Of course, this would be unfortunate from a documentation perspective. 

[dsmall]

yes, that's what it seems is happening - the exported PDF takes the current date as the creation date but the Visio document keeps the original creation Date.  That only "kind-of" makes sense and not the behavior I'm expecting or want!  2010 did not do this.  So the only way around this is to print to PDF currently.

[wapperdude]

I found an alternative approach, a work-around, not sure it helps.  See attached.  When save as pdf, the 2nd line of the "date" shape will retain the Visio creation date.

The approach was to create a shape data entry for the creation date.  Then, create a user defined entry, that uses GetVal fcn to access the shape data entry.  I suspect it's a timing thing, but, the result is that user entry displays the correct value, even though the shape data, directly, does not.  Just lucky I guess.