Formatting the “Date” variable

OmniGraffle currently uses OS X’s 10.0 compatibility mode for date formatting. While you are editing a shape object’s text, select Edit > Insert Variable > Current Date to add the standard current date variable to your text box. When you’re editing text the variable looks like <%Date%>, but will show as Thu Mar 20 2014 once you’ve clicked out of that object.

Below is a handy list of variables you can use in your own date formatting:

4-digit year: <%Date %Y%>
2-digit year: <%Date %y%>

2-digit month: <%Date %m%>
Full month name: <%Date %B%>
Abbreviated month name: <%Date %b%>

2-digit day: <%Date %d%> Day of the year: <%Date %j%>

Short day of week: <%Date %a%> Full day of week: <%Date %A%> Day of week as number: <%Date %w%>

Current time - hours: <%Date %H%>
Current time - minutes: <%Date %M%>
Current time - seconds: <%Date %S%>
Current time - AM/PM: <%Date %p%>

Datestamp: <%Date %x%>

Timestamp w/zone: <%Date %X%>

Timezone - name: <%Date %Z%>
Timezone - GMT offset: <%Date %z%>

Full date/time/zone: <%Date %c%>

If you’d like to create custom combinations, combine these within the angle brackets, and remember to finish the variable with %. For example, <%Date %B %d, %Y %H:%M %> will yield March 20, 2014 14:03.

One of OmniGraffle’s built-in stencils also provides some useful variable reference. In the Stencils Library, within the Common folder is a Reference stencil that provides some quick examples for formatting date tokens.