Hi Charles,

Thanks again for the advice. It's been difficult to follow but I think Im getting somewhere; Microsoft help files really do seem to insist on a certain level of knowledge to begin with which is above my level at present...

So far I started with opening a new document and saved it as a new .dotm template called "Master" - infuriatingly little help comes up when typing in "how to create a new global template in word" into google, so the less said about how long it took me just to get to this stage the better (still not sure this is a global template either).

Never the less, I created a new autoText in this Master and saved it, then created a new document using the Master template. The autoText was there available; so far so good.

I created an autoText Field and selected the appropriate item to display and up it popped - again with the rubbish answers on google results when asking how to create an autoText field

All seems to be doing what i want it to do apart from one thing. I saved the new doc then closed it. Then I updated the info in the master and saved that. I then re-opened the new one and it still displays the old information. You have to select it and press F9 to get it to update.

Apparently i need a Marco to do that?

is this right?