I do not - ever - send another lawyer a Word document unless I want him/her to make changes and send it back with the changes - in other words - it is a draft. Likewise with documents sent to clients.



I send pdf. That is the only way I know of to be sure that what the other side sees is what I saw when I sent it. What happens when I send my document to someone else? Will Word mess up my formatting? In addition, Word files can contain metadata, some of which might compromise client confidentiality or negotiation strategy.

When I receive a Word document from another attorney, I save it with a date as part of the name in the client file. I may freeze any dates if I think of it.

Most law firms are well aware of the vagaries of the date field. Many are not aware of metadata or the problems with text reflow.

The simplest way to prevent the problem in your own documents is to use a CREATEDATE field instead of a DATE field in your documents' templates. Using Date Fields in Microsoft Word Another option if not using a template (why aren't you using a template for common documents?) is to simply type the date. Typing the date puts text into the document rather than a field.

Generally when documents are prepared and mailed out physically, they are scanned in my office before they are mailed and the pdf is saved along with the Word version.

I am having a similar problem as janetb, but mine is when I reopen my own documents more so than clients documents. When I receive documents from clients and colleagues I save them with the date I received them as part of the file name. My big problem is that the CREATEDATE is great for documents that only get 1 date in the date field, but I sometimes need to enter multiple dates in 1 date field. Charles you say when the date is entered by typing in the date that it puts text into the document rather than a field. I have been typing the date in, and when I reopen the document all the dates(which are different dates)change to the same date. whether it be the current date or the createdate. I need to be able to stop any and all auto updating. For now I have been using the Crtl- F11 fix but I have to do it on each individual page, and that could be up to 250 pages. I also need to stop the auto updating in my templates, and I have around 300 templates that I use regularly with at least 1 date line per sheet. So Crtl-F11 locks the date field, Ctrl-Shift-F9 converts from a field to text and Ctrl+Shift+F9 unlinks the field. which one should I use, and do I have to do that to each of my templates?