Create Date-and-Time Stamps That You Can Use in File and Folder Names

Forward slashes and colons can ruin a good date. Date-and-time stamps that include these reserved characters can't be used in file and folder names, yet administrators sometimes need to incorporate a date and/or time in file and folder names. VBScript has date-manipulation tools, but they typically generate dates and times that not only include reserved characters but also are formatted according to locale.

Alex K. Angelopoulos has found that the simplest solution is to represent dates and times in the ISO 8601 standard’s basic format for displaying calendar dates. In "Creating Date and Time Stamps," Alex explains why the ISO 8601 standard is a good choice for date-and-time stamps. He also describes how to use VBScript code to easily generate ISO 8601 stamps. You can even use this code to generate ISO 8601 stamps on pre-Windows XP systems that don’t provide some convenient stamping tools. To read this article and download the code, go to http://windowsitpro.com/windowsscripting/article/articleid/92941/creating-date-and-time-stamps.html. I opened up this article for public viewing through July 3.