Trying to help out a colleague, I got as far as View > Master slide. Sure enough, there it is – a date from last year proudly displayed in today's presentation.

• main question: how can I replace this date – looks like something someone has typed in – with a field for "date last saved"?
• subsidiary question: from the file properties, on the other hand, it looks like the "date last printed" (not top of my list of useful properties for a presentation, but never mind). Unfortunately, printing the presentation is not changing the "date last printed" in the properties.

PPT 2010 on Windows 7, if that makes any difference :-}

Attached Images

pptDate.png (3.9 KB, 22 views)

There's no (simple - ie code free) way to add either e field for "date last saved" or "date last printed " to the footer. It is probably a coincidence that the date is the same. You should be able to alter it manually either on the large master or on some or all of the smaller layouts in Master View.

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Thanks, John. Unimpressed about the lack of fields … but a savvy colleague has shown me that PowerPoint lets you use more than one master: I just hadn't got as far as identifying the master with the incorrect information.

I have the same problem every time January comes around. I have the year in the footer after the copyright symbol. I change the year by going to Master View, searching for last year (2014) and replacing all with this year (2015). Must go into all PowerPoints to do this. Sigh.

I also see that when I'm in master view with the Insert menu showing, I can click on Header and Footer, and choose Include on slide - Date and time. And it will update automatically! Woohoo! Except it won't give me the option of including just the year. Stupid PowerPoint.

You probably know that there is no need to change the date (or even show it in fact). In theory the date should be the date the work was created.

However I know people want to do this and the only way would be code. There's no built in way I know of. Code could open all presentations and update them once a year or probably more useful in the long run update the date when the presentation is opened if the year is not current. The latter approach would require a small addin to be created.

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"the date the work was created" – all fine and dandy as long as everyone creates new presentations from scratch, and either finishes work within the day or doesn't mind a visible discrepancy <vbg> Most of my colleagues, and often for good reasons, will start from an existing presentation and modify it to make something new that needs to be saved as a new item.

A bit of integration between Office components would help, with the SaveDate field from Word available in PowerPoint. I have found a reference to a macro https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...b-771119b9fd77 and may investigate farther next time the question arises.

I did say "In theory"!

If you need the last save time / year you can query the Doc Props

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