It’s an old feature.
The engineers had to make a choice between the “current date-time” and what Applescript call “Time to GMT”.
the trick is exactly as old as the problem.
Don’t try to insert the date as a date but as a string.
The app will treat it as a date but will not apply the GMT/ UTC offset.
At this time : 17:48:05 in France, inserting a date inserts in fact 15:48:05 while inserting as string inserts tha wanted 17/48/05.
set f to (current date) as text
tell application "Numbers"
tell table 1 of active sheet of front document
set value of cell 1 of row 1 to f
end tell
end tell
But there is a drawback.
Try to run :
set f to (current date) as text
tell application "Numbers"
tell table 1 of active sheet of front document
set value of cell 1 of row 1 to f
delay 0.5
value of cell 1 of row 1
end tell
end tell
The cell will display 17:48:05 but the script will return 19:48:05 (in France of course)
If you do the same with your original attempt:
set f to (current date)
tell application "Numbers"
tell table 1 of active sheet of front document
set value of cell 1 of row 1 to f
delay 0.5
value of cell 1 of row 1
end tell
end tell
The cell will display 15:48:05 and the script will return 17:48:05
As I am one of the users which filed a report about the fact that Numbers wasn’t taking care of the “local time”, I will not complain about the way they answer the question.
Honestly, I don’t know if they may give an answer satisfying every requirements.
My own tip is to use two cells to store a date-time value.
Here, I would insert the value in A1 and insert the formula =“”&A1 in B1
With that, when I need to extract the date-time with a script, I extract it from B1, not from A1 and there is no GMT/UTC offset striking.
There is just a remaining question : is my tip OK if I send my Numbers document to an user working with an other date-time format. If someone want to test, just send a mail at koenig yvan sfr fr
I will respond with an attached document. I assume that it will pass the test but true experience would be better.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 19 mai 2015 18:01:19