Why does the original date change upon opening a document?

[Guest]

I recently switched from Word 2000 to Word 2003. I noticed that documents I
had originally saved (example: September 21, 2004 was date on letter) are
showing up as today (example: December 16, 2004) even though I had already
saved the letter, and just had to open it to re-print. I have already cleared
the UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY box, however, some documents' date remains the
origination date, and some change to today's date. Any ideas?

 

[Bill Foley]

Right-click the date and click "Toggle field codes". Add the word CREATE
before the word DATE inside the brackets. The DATE code tells Word to show
the date of your computer, which if correct, will always be today. The
field code CREATEDATE inserts a fixed date of when the document was created
and won't change. When done, right-click and select "Toggle field codes"
again to go back to the actual value for the code.

 

[Bill Foley]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that you also will need to right-click and select
"Update Field", or press F9 to get it to change back to the date you want.

 

[Guest]

Do I have to do this for Every Document that is having the problem? Or will
it "mass-fix" the problem?

 

[Bill Foley]

This "DATE" field is unique in each document. It really isn't a STYLE that
can be updated automatically. I'm sure someone out there might have a macro
that could search through a folder and find a DATE field and replace it with
a CREATEDATE field, save it, close it, and move on to another one. I know
of a "Batch and Replace" macro but I'm not sure if it will work for fields.
Maybe someone else might have a solution. Until then, guess you will need
to open each one. SORRY!

 

[Graham Mayor]

The batch macro will work if the field construction is displayed rather than
the result (ALT+F9).
Replace DATE with CREATEDATE
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Bill Foley]

Didn't think of that. COOL idea!

Now, you ready to modify the code to toggle all field codes so "DATE" shows,
run the Find/Replace, then toggle it back? HA!

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Long term, the solution is to fix the problem as you create the document.
Use templates that contain CreateDate fields in the appropriate places.
Create AutoText entries that have a CreateDate field that you can insert
from the keyboard or add to your Insert menu.

Do not use the Insert Date command. See
http://addbalance.com/word/datefields1.htm for information on the different
kinds of datefields and how to format them.

--

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

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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