Date Fields - Updating (Word 2000)

[adri]

I have a bunch of old Word documents that have the DATE field in them. Is there any way to open them without the field updating so I can print them with the original date? Same for the &[Date] in an Excel footer.

Thanks...Adri

[redbeard42]

Change the field to CreateDate. This is the date the doc was created and will not update. If the doc was created on one date and modified and sent another, you will get the first date. When used in a template, it will be the date the doc was created from the template- today- and not the date that the template was created.

Fred

[HansV]

I'm afraid there is no simple solution for Excel. It would take VBA code to place the creation date of the workbook in the header or footer. It's hard to get at the last modified date, because Excel changes this the moment a workbook is opened.

[jscher2000]

Hmmm, Undo doesn't work for this, does it...

In Word, you can choose between CreateDate, PrintDate and SaveDate. If the document was not saved after printing, then PrintDate might not be available. If someone opened the document later for review and saved it, then the SaveDate may not accurately reflect the date it was last worked on or effectively finalized. (Yet another reason that DATE fields should be locked or unlinked when finalizing a document.)

[macropod]

Hi Jefferson,

Even CREATEDATE can be unreliable. For example, if you save over the original document using Files|Save As, CREATEDATE updates to the current date & time.

SAVEDATE will show you the date the document was last saved, but you can't change a DATE, CREATEDATE or PRINTDATE field to a SAVEDATE field and save the document without the SAVEDATE value updating too. In the meantime, though, you can at least print the document with the last-saved date showing. I suppose one could code around this with vba, temporarily changing the system date & time to the SAVEDATE value, saving the document, then resetting the system date & time to their correct values.

Cheers

[jscher2000]

I would definitely not recommend changing the system date and time just for this. In thinking about this more, it seems best to overwrite the DATE field with the desired date as text, and either save it for posterity, or close without saving, depending on the desired effect. To retrieve the different values one could use the BuiltInDocumentProperties collection.

[macropod]

If you can be sure the date attribute you're after won't be changed again, then maybe I'd agree. However, if you want to the able to display the current CREATEDATE, PRINTDATE or SAVEDATE status and capture any future CREATEDATE, PRINTDATE or SAVEDATE events for the document, then I think you'd have to consider toggling the system date and time.

Cheers

[Phil Rabichow]

Hi Macropod:
I don't have Word 2000 anymore to check, but the behavior may be different in Word 2003. If I use File/SaveAs with a document containing the CreateDate field, the field doesn't automatically update when I open it. It will, of course, if I select it & press F9. However, the original poster was looking for a way to print the document with the original date & one way might be to substitute the CreateDate field & then unlink it with Ctrl+Shift+F9.

[adri]

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions. I should have said I already understand CREATEDATE, SAVEDATE, etc. I was just hoping someone would think of something I hadn't. All the drawbacks you all point out hold true here. The date I really want is SaveDate, but I can't change the field now because when I save the document again it will be the current saved date and I can't save them again for audit trail reasons. I wound up having to delete the field and manually type the SaveDate in order to print them. These are not my documents...I never leave the Date as a field in finished documents....oh well, thanks again for your efforts.

Adri