I find that sometimes documents I receive (not documents I create!) change the date to the current date every time I open them. These are always from companies, so I assume they have the date field formatted into their letterhead templates to update to the current date. I have a series of letters from a law firm, and they update every time I open or print them, which is very bad, because I need to know when they were written! And when I print them, I want the original date on them!

Is there a way to set my Office programs never to automatically update dates on any docs I open or print? Or never to automatically make any changes to other people's docs?

I find that all posts in forums on this issue tell you how to change this on a particular document you have created/are creating/will create, or for a particular date on a particular document. But I want to know how to keep Word and Excell from changing other peoples' docs when I open or print them. Even if I go back now and select a particular date in a particular doc, I would not know what date to change it back to because I have no idea when it was written--every time I printed it, it changed the date! This has really screwed up my correspondence records..:-(...

Please note that I am using Word 2003 on Windows 7.

Thanks for any suggestions.