Know- How to Print with Date and Time PDF Effortlessly?

Adding date and time watermarks to PDFs makes them look more professional and helps keep track of when they were printed. In this guide, we’ll show you easy ways to print with date and time PDF. Whether you’re using programs like Adobe Acrobat or smart solutions, or coding with Python, we’ve got simple steps to help you.

When you share documents online or offline, PDFs are the go-to because they’re easy to make from any device like a PC or smartphone. Plus, in important fields like banking, you often need to show when the document was made. We’ll talk about the easiest way to add date to PDF document. 

Remember, if it’s your first time trying, it might be tricky, and you could mess up the document if you need to do it right.  So, read the steps mentioned in the following section to efficiently add date and watermark to PDF document. 

Steps to Print with Date and Time PDF

Let’s have a quick look at the guidelines of the aforementioned utility:

• Download and launch the solution that we referred to.

• Use the ‘Add Files’ and ‘Add Folder’ buttons to insert PDFs.

• Select the ‘Date & Time’ option for the watermark type.

• Choose how you want the date and time to look from the options given.

• Before you make the final PDFs, you can check how they’ll look with the date and time on them. Just click ‘Preview’.

• When you’re ready, hit ‘Generate’.

So, after considering this approach to add date to PDF document, I don’t think that you need to opt for another one. Still, if you want to do the task manually, then next we will talk about the same. 

Manual Approaches to Add Date & Time in PDFs Easily

At present, there are many manual techniques sought by users online. But among them, there is only one reliable approach that we can acquire to do the same i.e. Adobe Acrobat Pro. However, if you are a technical user who wants to know the steps of a Python solution, then don’t worry, further, we will discuss that also. 

#Approach 1. Insert Date & Time Watermark in PDF Using Adobe Acrobat Pro

As we know the PDF file was launched by Adobe Systems in 1993. Plus, it supports whether to add draft watermark to PDF or date and time within the portable document format. Keep in mind, that this is a paid tool and seems complex to operate. But, if you already bought its subscription, then just go through below mentioned steps to print with date and time PDF:

• • • Open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Pro>>Go to the “Tools” tab.
    • Select “Edit PDF” from the Tools Center.
    • Click on the “Watermark” option.
    • Choose “Add” and then select “Add Text” from the dropdown menu.
    • Enter the date and time format you want in the text box (e.g., “mm-ss-mm, MM-dd-yyyy, dd-MM-yyyy”).
    • You can adjust the font, size, color, and other settings as desired.
    • Position the watermark where you want it on the page( Horizontal or Vertical distances).
    • Click “OK” to apply the watermark.
    • Save the PDF with the date and time watermark added.

#Approach 2. Add Date to PDF Document Via Python

To print with date and time PDF using Python, you have to ensure that ‘reportlab’ has been installed in your system. If not, then you can download it from pip ‘pip install reportlab’. After ensuring this setup, follow these outlined points:

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
from datetime import datetime
def create_pdf_with_date_time(pdf_file_name):

    c = canvas.Canvas(pdf_document_name, pagesize=letter)
    # Obtain the latest date and time
    now = datetime.now()
    current_date_time = now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")

    # Adjust font and font size
    c.setFont("Helvetica", 12)

    # Draw text
    text = "Printing Date and Time: {}".format(current_date_time)
    c.drawString(100, 700, text)

    # Store the PDF
    c.save()

make_pdf_with_date_time("output.pdf")

So, with these codes, you can easily add watermarks to portable document format, for modifying text you can use the ‘drawString’ code.

Also read: How to Insert Image Signature in PDF?

#Approach 3. Print with Date and Time PDF With MS Word

So, if you want to add watermarks in smaller quantities, then you can opt for MS Word. Here are the instructions of the same:

• • First, open your files within Microsoft Word>>Go to the “Insert” tab on the ribbon.
  • Click on the “Date & Time” option in the Text group.
  • In the Date and Time dialog box, you can select the format you want for the date and time.
  • Click “OK” to insert the date and time into your document>>Go to the “File” menu and select “Print.”
  • Now, In the print dialog box, choose the printer as “Microsoft Print to PDF” from the list of printers>>Click on the “Print” button.

Observational Verdict

Within this write-up, we discussed i.e. how to print with date and time PDF, with reliable instructions. For the same, we covered three manual solutions, but they do not seem as up to the mark. Therefore, we explore one out-of-the-box automated solution to add date to PDF document simultaneously.