Hello and first time poster.

I am in customer service and we have to create outage documents when a 3rd party provider service fails. In a Word document I need to enter the date the outage started and ended. YYYY-DD-DD HH:MM

Since we need to post this in WordPress in a dozen languages, it means I have to edit the dates for all these languages.

In Excel it would be easy. I would enter the date manually in one cell and reference that cell throughout the spreadsheet. ie b14=A1

I basically want to do the same in this Word document. I manually want to enter the date/time and fields throughout the (same) document will update base on the referenced date.



I looked online on how to do this but everything I found wants to force today's date and time automatically.

Could you help me with this?

You can add a linked Date Picker Content Control to your document and edit the properties to show the desired format. Then duplicate that Content Control and alter the properties to show the date and time in a different format. You will be able to change any one instance and have all the others show their regionalised version of the same.

The easiest way to get the first linked date picker is to go to Insert > Quick Parts > Document Property > Publish Date. You then edit the properties by selecting it and going to the Developer Tab and clicking the Properties button.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks but i'm not sure if I explained properly. What you are suggesting forces todays date. I do not want to 'automatically' fill today's day and time hour. I want to 'manually' input the date/time and all the other fields will copy this value. Again, like a spreadsheet. I type abc in cell A1 and because C14=A1 it will return 'abc'.




I do not see anything here that allows me to over ride the date value. Frankly it doesnt have to be a date picker. It can be a plain text control. Which I've tried and copied the control. It seems to work The only thing is if I change the value in one, it does not change the others. Any ways to do this?

It doesn't force today's date at all. The entire point of a date picker is you can pick any date. You can also type into the CC if you don't want to interact with the Date Picker. The format of any date will give you guidance on how to enter it.

Don't be mislead by the choice of Publish Date in my description - this is just a display name and doesn't get amended to always be 'today'. This will work with any xml data but some validation of requiring a valid date makes the solution more robust.

And my suggested method DOES need to be a date picker because that encourages the likelihood that a date/time is entered.

If you don't want to change date/time formats in the duplicate fields (as per your abc example in two cells) then you can ignore the Date Picker CC and read Greg's page here Repeating Data (Populating Multiple Like Fields). I would recommend the CC method on this page though.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

You can even repurpose the Publish Date Document Property Content Control under the Quick Ports > Document Properties menu. It is a date picker and is already mapped.

This page goes into details on how to do that.

Repeating Data Using Document Property Content Controls and Other Mapped Content Controls

I should have avoided the term 'date' altogether as we are too focused on that.

I'll just rephrase. Instead of date, I want to input a plain text string. I do not want a date picker, or date formatting. Just pure plain text. When I input a text string in a 'box', it will automatically fill all the other 'boxes' in the document. If I then change the text string, it will immediately convert all the other 'boxes' to the new input. As I said just like a spreadsheet.

I will review the links provided to see if it will help with this.

Thank you so much for your input

The type of content control is barely relevant. You can reproduce any content control value anywhere in the document. Insert a rich text content control. It may help to use Insert Content Control Add-In and set the mapping option. Then copy and paste the control wherever you want the content reproduced. Whatever you enter into any of those copies will be repeated in all the others.

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Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

Agreeing with Graham that the type does not matter. To repurpose the existing ones, you are limited to one date picker control and 14 plain text controls. I find repurposing good for small projects and to get a quick result.
Repeating Data Using Document Property Content Controls and Other Mapped Content Controls


For major projects or to use other kinds of CCs, I use Graham's utility or one from Greg Maxey. (I generally have both loaded.) They allow for quick and easy mapping of any CC.