What is a create date?

[Tanner]

I e-mailed a word.doc to someone in July, they opened and saved it in July,
but the created date in the origin section says November. How can this be?

 

[Barb Reinhardt]

Right click on the field in question and toggle the field code. I suspect
that DATE is in the code instead of CREATEDATE.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You are using a DATE or TIME field rather than a CREATEDATE field. This
field should be put in the original template if possible.

In the document in question, press Alt-F9 to display field codes. Then
change the field to a CREATEDATE field, press F9 and then Alt-F9.

See http://addbalance.com/word/datefields1.htm for information on the
different kinds of datefields and how to format them.

Nevertheless, the CreateDate field will show the date the document is first
saved on the current system if the field is updated. This is one of the
(many) reasons for not emailing Word documents when you want a static
product at the other end. You can prevent fields from updating by locking
them or unlinking them before you send it out. Still, unless I want the
other person editing the document I send them, I send pdf files instead.

 

[Jezebel]

The others have given the likely answer. However there is a bug in Word
relating to CreateDates. Under some circumstances you can end up with a
document that has a CreateDate that is later than the PrintDate or the
file's LastModified date. I haven't seen a definitive explanation, but all
the instances that I've met involved copying, emailing, and saving-as.

 

[Helmut Weber]

Hi Jezebel,

by the way, on OS level (Novell and Windows Server),
I got hundreds of documents last updated in 2038 or even later.
(No, I am not a time traveller.)
Some other hundreds of docs don't have an update date at all.

Greetings from Bavaria, Germany
Helmut Weber, MVP
"red.sys" & chr(64) & "t-online.de"
Word XP, Win 98
http://word.mvps.org/

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Jezebel

At least one explanation for this kind of behaviour is the following, which
can be reproduced at will.

On Monday, create a template and print it out. On Tuesday, create a new
document from that template. Your new document will have a create date of
Tuesay, but a last-printed-on date of Monday.

So it appears to have been printed out before it was created!

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Charles Kenyon]

SaveAs (and presumably saving on a new machine from an email) gives a new
creation date.

 

[Jezebel]

None of these explanations covers the situation where the file LastModified
date -- as reported by Windows Explorer -- is earlier than the CreateDate
reported by the document, which is the bug that is documented around the
traps.