Hi,



Can someone please tell me how to stop the previous date in a letter I open from changing to the date I open it. This is causing problems, b/c then I don't have the date I wrote the letter.

Thanks


Michelle

I suspect you may have an included a "today's date" field in your letter instead of a "date created". Word can keep track of both if you ask it nicely :-} as this screenshot of document properties shows.

Attached Images

properties.png (2.0 KB, 49 views)

You can fix this by selecting the errant date, pressing Shift-F9, changing 'DATE' in the field to 'CREATEDATE' and pressing F9 to update the field. This will restore the date the document was first saved - or whenever it was most recently saved via SaveAs and will remain fixed until the next SaveAs is done.

If 'CREATEDATE' doesn't return the date you're after, you might obtain it via 'PRINTDATE' or 'SAVEDATE'. With either of these, though, the date will change whenever the document is reprinted or resaved, respectively. In that case, having updated the field you might want to lock it, via Ctrl-F11, or convert it to text, via Ctrl-Shift-F9.

To see how to do just about everything you might want to do with dates in Word, check out my Microsoft Word Date Calculation Tutorial at the top of this forum:
https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/...-tutorial.html

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

Thank you.

I just can't believe we can't have the date the letter was first finished. That should be an option one should be able to choose.

I guess I'm going to have to manually type it in each & every time as this is just too complicated.


Michelle

How would Word ever know when 'first finished' was? One letter might be finished on the day it was created, another might take months, going through innumerable revisions in the interim, perhaps even with significant breaks between bouts of intensive editing.

As noted in my Microsoft Word Date Calculation Tutorial, you can update the CREATEDATE field's date via Save As. That might be sufficient for your 'first finished' date. You can then use the SAVEDATE field to capture/output the date on which the document was last saved and/or the PRINTDATE field to capture/output the date on which the document was last printed. Note that the PRINTDATE field updates every time the document is printed, so it won't do if you're wanting to print the last previous date on which the document was printed; to do that you'd have to lock the field via Ctrl-F11. You can unlock it again afterwards via Ctrl-Shift-F11.

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

So there should be 2 different options. I never had this issue in Word 2003.

When I'm writing legal documents that have to be printed off weeks after the letter was completed, I need to know what date I finished the letter (this was the last time I opened it) & re-print.

As a lawyer, I early recognized this problem with Word's automatic default date. You have had the issue in Word 2003 even if you didn't recognize it. The date field function (and that of related fields) has not changed since at least Word 97, and I suspect, not since Word 2. (Word 2003 is Word 11.) Word never knows when you are finished with a document. Only you would know that. There are a number of reasons for an experienced user to be unhappy with the ribbon versions of Word, but the DATE field and the way it acts is not one of them.
Using Date Fields in Microsoft Word

• I use the CreateDate field, as originally suggested, in my templates. you can update this field to a later date by using SaveAs and then updating the field.
• Another alternative would be to select the date field when you have completed your document and pressing either Ctrl+6 or Ctrl+Shift+F9 and unlinking the field (changing it from a field to text).
• A third alternative, and the one that I believe gives the greatest evidentiary value, is to convert the document to pdf format. This can be done directly or by scanning a printed copy.

In an existing document, changing the DATE field to a CREATEDATE field will give you a better approximation of of the date that the document was finalized.

Alt+Shift+D inserts the DATE field.

You must have inserted your dates using this or incorporated DATE fields in your templates. The AutoComplete function (at least in Word 2010) inserts the text, not a field.

Templates in Microsoft Word

Since all Word versions are the same in this regard, the only way you wouldn't have had an issue in Word 2003 is if you either didn't use a DATE field or, if you did, you unlinked or locked it at some stage. Fields can be locked via Ctrl-F11 and unlinked via Ctrl-Shift-F9.
Word doesn't have a field that tracks when you last opened a document. The nearest you can get is via the SAVEDATE field, which will record when the document was last edited. Unfortunately, updating that field to reflect the last-saved date date counts as a new edit, which will cause problems if you then save the document and something causes that field to update at a later date.

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

Sorry for the delay, I was moving.

Charles I'll just have to remember to uncode it. I don't use templates. Never learned how & at this point have no time nor need to learn templates.

Thanks to you & Paul.


Michelle

Every Word document you've ever created uses a template. That's how Word works and is unavoidable. Granted, you can make copies of an existing document, but even that will have links back to the template it's based on. All you need do to find that out is to look under Developer>Document Template. In most cases, the template is likely to be Word's own 'Normal' template.

IMHO anyone making serious use of Word doesn't have the time not to learn how to use them.

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

You can uncode (fix) the date by putting your insertion point in the date and pressing Ctrl+6.

I am in my 60's and still learning. I agree completely with Paul.

There are a few things in Word that anyone using it for more than casual correspondence needs to learn. This is even more true in the legal environment. I would start with:

• Styles
• Templates
• Automatic Numbering

For legal documents, a good understanding of fields including the date field variations and the SEQ field is very useful.

If you use Word more than 20 hours a month, you will recover the time you spend reading these within the first month and save time thereafter. I guarantee it. You have the time; it is your choice how you want to use it.

I have a similar problem in Word 2007: the autocomplete function within a normal.dot based document works sometimes, and other times not. I always begin with the current day of the week. Sometimes it completes to the entire date, other times not, within the very same document. I'm not inserting a field at all.

This may seem similar, but it is far from it.

Autocomplete is iffy. This has nothing to do with normal.dotm.

There is a an Add-In available (free - no macros) on my Downloads Page called DateLoader Add-In. If placed in your Word Startup Folder the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+D will insert a CreateDate field in the format April 6, 2013.

I only need each date once, as it will appear in a journal entry for that day. From the description, it seems as though the date will update each time the document opens, which would not serve my need for a date in this document.