Charles I really appreciate your help, using your insights I am almost there.

Is there any way to automate the Ctrl+Shift+F11 step?. The user will almost certain forget to do it.

If a macro is the only way, could you provide some feedback on how to integrate with the autotext? Perhaps a macro that could be triggered after inserting an auto text and loop through all date fields and unlink them? Is that possible?

In this document there is some information about macros that execute on document close: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DocumentEvents.htm

Other question: I am really concern about the user experience, until now I just distribute a Word template (dotx) and all works wonderful. No special authorization or security warnings are shown. If I use a macro could I expect some warning?

Thanks.