Odd behaviour of TITLE and SUBJECT fields

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jezebel
  • Start date Start date
J

Jezebel

If you enter a title or subject (on the File > Properties > Summary dialog)
that contains a colon -- eg "Category: definition" then display it in the
document using a { TITLE } or { SUBJECT } field, the display shows only the
text after the colon, unless the colon is preceded by a backslash, in which
case the field displays the entire text, INCLUDING the backslash.

However, if the value is displayed using { DOCPROPERTY TITLE } it displays
correctly.

Can anyone shed any light on what's going on?
 
The behavior is the same in Word 2000. However, if I include a leading
space, such as " Category: definition" for Subject in the Properties
dialog box, it displays correctly with both { SUBJECT } and
{ DOCPROPERTY "Subject" } fields.
 
That rather confounds the issue than explaining it.Adding a leading space to
my titles is hardly a solution. It screws up the document library, apart
from anything else.
 
Jezebel said:
If you enter a title or subject (on the File > Properties > Summary
dialog) that contains a colon -- eg "Category: definition" then
display it in the document using a { TITLE } or { SUBJECT } field,
the display shows only the text after the colon, unless the colon is
preceded by a backslash, in which case the field displays the entire
text, INCLUDING the backslash.

However, if the value is displayed using { DOCPROPERTY TITLE } it
displays correctly.

Can anyone shed any light on what's going on?
Click to expand...

Word 2003 doesn't have any problem with a colon in either field. When I get
home tonight I'll try the other three versions I have installed there.
 
Word 2000 is what I'm using. It's more a curiosity, I guess, since using a
DocProperty field is an easy work-around.
 
I can confirm that the problem occurs in Word 2000, but not in Word
97, 2002, or 2003. You just got lucky in the bug sweepstakes, I guess.
:-)
 
A little Googling has found some more references to this. Apparently it
applies to the Title, Subject, and Author fields. The problem appears only
if the colon is at the end of the first word, and that word has at least
three characters, and there is no backslash anywhere preceding it.

My guess is that it's an unintended side-effect of Word creating a default
filename from the title.
 
That rather confounds the issue than explaining it.

Quite true. The intention of my message was simply to share an
observation.
 
I found the thread started by Kam Chan in April 2000. Bill Coan said then
that he reported the bug to MS. Apparently they fixed it in Word 2002 but
never patched Word 2000, probably because the DocProperty field is
considered a valid workaround. Since that version is now past the end of
"mainstream support"
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[LN];LifeOffice), it
probably will never be patched.
 
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