Manually set Product Added date

I am transferring an existing store to Zen Cart with MANY products, while continuing to add new ones. I like the idea of letting customers know when a product was added to the catalog, and I have records of when I first offered all my products. However, Zen Cart automatically sets the date as the date the product was added to the Zen Cart catalog, regardless of how long the product may actually have been available in my old store.

Also, while simultaneously adding new products and transferring old ones, products that I've had available for years now can show up as more recently added than ones that are truly new. This also creates a problem in the New Products category, where products I've had for years are suddenly new again just because I transferred them to Zen Cart and now appear together with products that are truly new.

When creating a new product in Zen Cart, it would be nice to have an option of using either the current date as the "product added" date or specifying one of your own choosing. At present, my only option seems to be to not show the product added date and, if I want to be accurate, to deactivate the New Products category until such time as all my existing inventory (thousands of items) has been transferred into Zen Cart.

Thanks for your consideration!

here I had a other problem but I fixed it with Easy populate
I mean massive add of VAT u should see the patch for zencart its very easy, just u need to install first u have to read the all text files
when U achive instalation U have to (must to ) add the other languages I mean just copy from the includes/languages "english" foldder to your altarnate lang folders or it will not work.
Then u have to log in the admin panel then i have in tools easy populate.
See the example file how to edit products then u can edit your own case.

U can use MS Excel its very simple but do not change the file format save as with "yes" good luck"

P.S. look treads with Easy populate at the forum.