In OmniGraffle, while you are editing a shape object’s text you can insert a few different date variables found in the
Edit > Insert Variable menu. For instance, you can insert the Current Date variable, which appears as <%Date%> when
editing the text on an object, but displays a date value formatted as Thu Jun 20 2024 once you click out of the
object. You aren’t, however, limited to just that default date format! Additional variables can be used to customize
the date formatting. For instance, if you wanted to use ISO date formatting (e.g. 2024-06-20), you would write the
date variable as <%Date %Y-%m-%d%>.
Below is a handy list of all the variables you can use to customize date formatting to your liking:
Compact-list
y— Year, represeneted as two digits, e.g. 24 for 2024Y— Year, respresented as four digits, e.g. 2024
Compact-list
B— Month, respresnted as full month name, e.g. Octoberb— Month, respresented as three letter abbreviation, e.g. Oct for Octoberm— Month, represented as two digits ranging from 01–12, e.g. 10 for October
Compact-list
j— Day of the year, respresented as two-digits ranging from 01–366 (as appropriate), e.g. 41 for February 10th
Compact-list
d— Day of the month, respresnted as two digits ranging from 01–31 (as appropriate), e.g. 05 for the fifth day of the monthe— Day of the month, respresnted as one or two digits ranging from 1–31 (as appropriate), e.g. 5 for the fifth day of the month
Compact-list
A— Day of the week, represented as the full day name, e.g. Thursdaya— Day of the week, represented as a three letter abbreviation, e.g. Thu for Thursdayw— Day of the week, represented as a single digit from 1–7, e.g. 5 for Thursday (if Sunday is the system-defined first day of the week)
Compact-list
H— Hour, represented as two digits ranging from 00–23, e.g. 11 for 11 AM and 23 for 11 PMI— Hour, represented as two digits ranging from 01–12, e.g. 11 for 11 AM or PMM— Minutes, represented as two digits ranging from 00–59S— Seconds, represented as two digits ranging from 00–59P— AM / PMZ— Timezone, respsented as the fulle timezone name, e.g. Pacific Daylight Timez— Timezone, represneted as UCT offset, e.g. -0700 for Pacific Daylight Time that is sever hours behind UCT time
Compact-list
x— Datestamp, e.g. Thu Jun 20 2024X— Timestamp, e.g. 15:00:00 PDTc— Combined datestamp and timestamp, e.g. Thu Jun 20 15:00:00 PDT 2024
You can add these variables as you want, in whatever combination you need, following the initial OmniGraffle date
variable. Each additional variable just needs to be preceded with its own %, and then there always needs to be a
trailing % before the closing bracket (>). For example, <%CreationDate %B %d, %Y %H:%M%> would yield a date
looking like June 20, 2024 14:03.
