I have a large document, header, footers, change-tracking page, cover page. Each area has a date of the form "Monday, December 10, 2012". This date is identical in each of the locations. When I make a new version I simply want to change all the occurrences of "Monday, December 10, 2012" with whatever the current date is - but Word has other ideas. First I do the document and it makes one change - the header page. Then the footers - which are odd/even and I must do at least FOUR changes there, maybe six, I presume it cannot go across sections. It is infuriating. I simply stick the cursor in the line where the change was NOT made and repeat the change and this time it does it.

I am using Find & Replace from the Advanced thing. What should take a second takes considerably longer and on occasions I have missed one of the changes.

Any ideas?

I am not familiar with Office for Mac but, I would 'assume' it is somewhat similar to the standard Office software.

In any case, if your version has an "Insert" ribbon, go to the "Text" portion of that ribbon and select "Date & Time". Select the date/time option of your choice and then check the "Update Automatically" checkbox in lower right-hand portion of the drop-down menu. Use this insert option at each place you desire within your document and you will no longer have to search/replace. It will update automatically each time you "save" your document.

Thank you, but that is not what I want as I have had Word change dates when I do not want them changed when set to automatic. I want to change all relevant dates in a document when I update the thing for a new release or version and at no other time, the automatic update can change dates when I am not ready or prepared. I need it strictly under user control.

Thanks

Hi Lawrence,

You can use date fields - and lock (via Cmd-F11) them to prevent updates until you unlock them (via Cmd-Shift-F11) to allow updates.

As for your numerous ranges using the same date, I'd suggest inserting a DATE field once in the body of the document then bookmarking and cross-referencing that field wherever else you want the date to appear. Then, whenever you want to update the date, select the field, unlock it, do a print preview, then relock the field.

Even simpler is to use a CREATEDATE field and, whenever you want the date to update, simply re-save the document using Save As. No locking/unlocking required and, if you'd prefer not to use bookmarks, you have have the field wherever you want it in the document.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]