Marcia

I am surmising here but your stated need to exit the file and re-open Word is likely not due to the issue you think it is. I suspect you are testing this field in a document that has not been saved yet. If that is the case, SaveDate won't have a value it can return yet so it returns a blank value.

SaveDate is an unfortunate field that is always one step behind in that it shows the date the document was previously saved until you update the field - which then means you need to save the document again, which then means you need to refresh the field etc. So to do testing of the field properly:
1. Save the document (to set the metadata value save date to right now)
2. Refresh the field
3. Save the document again to store the refreshed field value.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia