Hi, Steve,
The answer is, as usual, "It depends..."
If most or all of the dates in your document are plain text, then Greg's
answer is probably the best you're going to get -- that, or a macro that
does the same series of replacements, just faster.
If the dates in your document are all {DATE} fields instead of plain text,
AND if they don't contain a \@ "...." picture switch, then changing them all
involves two steps:
- Go to the Insert > Date and Time dialog, select the format you want, click
the Default button at the bottom of the dialog, answer yes to the prompt,
and click the Cancel button (you want to change the default, but not insert
a new date field).
- Go to File > Print Preview, and then click the Close button to go back to
the document. This updates all the field-based dates, which should now be in
the desired format.
The third scenario, where the dates are fields but they do contain a picture
switch, can be fixed with a different Find/Replace than Greg's. First press
Alt+F9 to display all the field codes. Type this in the Find box of the
Replace dialog:
\@ "MM-dd-yyyy"
and type this in the Replace box:
\@ "MMMM dd, yyyy"
Click the Replace All button, close the dialog, and press Alt+F9 again to
hide the field codes. Then do the Print Preview to update the fields.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:
http://www.mvps.org/word
Steve Babcock wrote:
Greg :
So ... there is no way to do a global re-format as you might do in
Excel ?
Steve
Greg Maxey wrote:
There is probably a better way however this method may
work for you.
Edit>Replace
Check More>Use Wild Card
Type 01-([0-9]{2})- in the find what field
Type January \1, in the replace with field. Note, be sure
to type a space after the comma in the replace with field.
This will take care of one month. If your "many" is
enough to make this worth your while, then repeat the
process for the remaining eleven.
-----Original Message-----
I have a documnet with many dates in it. They were
formatted to the
mm-dd-yyyy style.
I would like to change the format of all the dates in
this document to
mmmmmmm dd, yyyy. How do I do this ?
Steve
.