Hazel not selecting the correct Date with Date match

Hello,

I seem to be having problems with Date Match selecting the correct occurance of dates in some of my documents. I go into preview and search for the date to ensure it was properly OCR'd and it can be found when via preview. This doesn't happen consistently, and it doesn't even happen to the same invoice, for example all of my electric bills. Some will work fine then one or two will fail. Anyone else experiencing this or have ideas on how I might be able to determine what the problem is?

Thanks,
Tim

Is it not finding any dates or picking the wrong occurrence? Can you email me an example of a file that works and one that doesn't?

I had a similar problem- Hazel was successfully identifying the date and pulling the correct instance, but changing the year from 2013 to 2020. The problem was that I has set the token to record a two digit year, but the rename step was formatted for a four digit year. I'm guessing it just repeated the two digits stored in the token? I don't know if that will help here at all, but thought I'd share.

In that case, it was picking the first two digits (20) and ignoring the second two.

Same problem here. I thought my camera was wrong, but I've checked the creation date and everything's correct but it seems that since Hazel 3.x upgrade, I have this problem. Any ideas or update to fix this? Many thanks.

As noted above, are you sure you are specifying the correct number of digits? Also, not sure what you mean about since the 3.x upgrade since the date matching feature did not exist before then.

I'm having that same problem. On occasion, maybe 1 out of 12 will grab the wrong date. Most work fine. I've gone in to look at the OCR for those failed files and they look correct, but Hazel delivers a different date.

Please post more details about the failing case. Your exact pattern and the specific date text you are trying to match.

I'll give it a try.

This is my date match: 12/31/99. It renames the file to Date Match (1999-12) - XXXX Statement.pdf

8 out of 10 times that works.

One invoice has a closing date of 07/29/12. Hazel renames it 2012-07 - XXXX Statement.pdf

Another invoice has a closing date of 08/29/12 and Hazel also tries to rename it 2012-07 - XXXX Statement.pdf

It happened one other time in 2012. And a few times in 2013 files. But mostly it works.

I have the files if you're like me to send them.

I have found that if Hazel is grabbing the wrong date (seems to be an issue specifically with scanned & OCR’d documents - ScanSnap native OCR has dates in different order than Acrobat Pro XI OCR - go figure), I try to get more specific in the match:

Rather than:
Contents contain match “Date Match”

I’ll add the language that precedes the match:
Contents contain match “Closing Date: Date Match”

I can’t figure out how to add a screen shot to this to show you exactly what I mean.

bjud wrote:I have the files if you're like me to send them.

Yes, please email support along with an export of your rules.

Just sent them. Thank you.

AthenLaw wrote:I have found that if Hazel is grabbing the wrong date (seems to be an issue specifically with scanned & OCR’d documents - ScanSnap native OCR has dates in different order than Acrobat Pro XI OCR - go figure), I try to get more specific in the match:

Rather than:
Contents contain match “Date Match”

I’ll add the language that precedes the match:
Contents contain match “Closing Date: Date Match”

I can’t figure out how to add a screen shot to this to show you exactly what I mean.

I'm having a similar issue. I too am trying to grab the "Closing Date:" of a PDF bank statement downloaded from my bank's website. The Closing Date is the first date that matches my pattern but it consistently returns the second date that matches the pattern. I tried to use "Closing Date: Date Match, but it appears, at least for my bank statement, that the information is arranged as a table with "Closing Date:" in the first column and the date value in the second column. It seems there no way I'm able to select information in the two "columns". (I say this because, if while looking at the pdf in Preview I select the text "Closing Date:" and the date to the right of it, it also selects all the information below the text "Closing Date".)

Since it seemed to be returning the second date that match the pattern and I specified the first. I modified the condition to grab the second date and that returned the first date, the one I want. There are three dates on the bank statement that match my date pattern, they are in visual order 1) "Closing Date", 2) "Due Date", and 3) "Late Date". Hazel sees the order as 2), 1), 3). So I've got something that's working on the last 5 months of statements, but who knows if it will work next month?

With PDFs, the order of the text in the file is arbitrary. It depends on the software generating it. If it's coming from a digital source (like someone saved as PDF from a word processor), then it's more likely the text order will be more consistent. When using OCR, though, things can vary a bit depending on different factors. When getting bank statements, it's always better to download their digital copy than to take their paper copy and scan it.