Dates Updating in Word

[Guest]

A friend of mine has this issue he asked me about, but I have no explanation.

He says that he has a bunch of saved Word files that have manually input
dates at the top of the document (greeting line). He says that ever since
his company upgraded their Office 2003 to SP2, the date fields in those saved
documents are now date fields. How can Word change input date data to date
fields?

Does anyone have any idea how this is or offer some kind of logical
explanation?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It depends on how they were "manually input." If the typist used Alt+Shift+D
or the Insert Date button on the Header and Footer toolbar or used Insert |
Date and Time with the "Update automatically" box checked, the result was a
DATE field. This can be corrected by changing the field to CREATEDATE, which
will then reflect the creation date of the document. It would be advisable
to put a CREATEDATE field in the document template to save typists from
having to insert the date manually.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It depends on how they were "manually input." If the typist used Alt+Shift+D
or the Insert Date button on the Header and Footer toolbar or used Insert |
Date and Time with the "Update automatically" box checked, the result was a
DATE field. This can be corrected by changing the field to CREATEDATE, which
will then reflect the creation date of the document. It would be advisable
to put a CREATEDATE field in the document template to save typists from
having to insert the date manually.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

My buddy says that the dates were typed in manually.

 

[Guest]

My buddy says that the dates were typed in manually.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Short of a macro of some sort, I don't know of any way for a typed-in date
to be converted to a field. Someone's memory is faulty.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Short of a macro of some sort, I don't know of any way for a typed-in date
to be converted to a field. Someone's memory is faulty.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

It will not. If he opened the original documents in Word 97, they would
still be date fields.

Perhaps he somehow triggered the display of field codes. Alt-F9 toggles
this.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




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[Charles Kenyon]

It will not. If he opened the original documents in Word 97, they would
still be date fields.

Perhaps he somehow triggered the display of field codes. Alt-F9 toggles
this.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.