I’ve been using Obsidian to build a database of historic events for a research project. Initially I tried using the “Date” property but quickly encountered a significant problem. I often do not have the complete date. Sometimes I just have the year, or I’ll have the year and month but not the day. I tried using zeros where I didn’t have the information (e.g. 1983-02-00 or 1983-00-00). When I do this Obsidian auto converts the 00 to 01. It will not accept 00.
I then tried creating a custom property as a number type using the same method (1983-00-00) but it will not accept the dashes.
I then tried creating a custom property as a text type and it did initially accept it but then, before long Obsidian would auto convert the property type to date, then not accept the format and auto convert. Very frustrating.
Also, sometimes I don’t know the date but want to put an approximate date range with a note such as “approximate” or “late summer,” etc..
The workaround I came up with and have been using is to create a custom property as text type and put the year, a space (to prevent Obsidian from converting it to a “Date” property), then the month and day (1983 00-00) I’ll sometimes add a note on the end. It has been working OK and has allowed me to sort tables in Dataview and Bases using this property but I feel there is a better way of doing this.
I’m ultimately wanting to create customizable and filterable visual timelines of my notes using the front matter date information. I want to enter the metadata the most effective and efficient way for lending itself to organizing timelines. I have tried some of the timeline plugins but none seem to do what I want. I’m still looking.
Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated.