Word XP/03 - Re-Printing Documents with AutoDate?

[Steven Hilgendorf]

Hello,

I have a need to re-print, several, Word documents previously formated
with the Auto-Date feature enabled, but I need the re-printed copies to
reflect the original created date? If I right-click on an existing
Word document and choose "Print," the document is printed with the
current date. If I open an existing Word document the date is updated
with the current date, so I have to manually change it back then
re-print and not save to preserve the original date.

I've tried unchecking "Update automatically" under Insert|Date and Time
without success. This seems to only work on new documents and documents
that are opened and re-saved with the setting unchecked.

Is there something I'm missing or any other suggestions?

Steven

 

[garfield-n-odie]

The date in the documents that have this problem is inserted with
a { DATE } field. You can see this if you open one of the
documents and press Alt+F9 to display field codes. Change the {
DATE } field to a { CREATEDATE } field, and save the document.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

The CREATEDATE field is supposed to put the original created file
date (not the current date) on the document when the document is
opened or printed. Is it not doing that for you? The field
should look something like { CREATEDATE \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" \*
MERGEFORMAT }.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

If you have thousands of documents with this problem, and haven't
noticed it until now, then it's probably not really a problem. A
few possibilities come to mind though:
1. You can add a line or two of VBA code to the AutoOpen
macro in normal.dot to make it automatically update fields in
documents when they are opened. I'm not much of a VBA coder, so
if you don't know how to do this, you might google or post a
question in one of the Word VBA newsgroups.
2. You can click on Tools | Options | Print | check the
"Update fields" box | OK. This setting forces an automatic field
update before printing, but not upon opening. This setting is
specific to each user/computer, but it might be faster to change
the setting in a few computers than to change thousands of documents.
3. You can modify the macro in
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm to display
field codes before replacing the DATE field with a CREATEDATE field.

As for "a way to make Word default to adding "CREATEDATE" when

doing an Insert\Date and Time in new documents", that's a user

education or template issue. Tell the users to use CREATEDATE
instead of DATE, or change the field in the template upon which
these thousands of documents are based.

 

[Steven Hilgendorf]

You seem to be correct, but what is this change suppose to accomplish?
All it does, from what I can see, is overwrite the original created date
with the current date. Once saved I lose the original file date too.

Maybe I was not clear. I want to print the document(s) with the
original created date and preserve the original created file date.

Steven

 

[Steven Hilgendorf]

No it was not working, not until I right-clicked the field and chose
"Update" ) O.K. this seems to work, but is going to be alot of work,
i.e. opening, changing, saving, updating, printing, etc.

Is there a simple way to apply this change to a few hundred/thousand
documents?

Also, is there a way to make Word default to adding "CREATEDATE" when
doing an Insert\Date and Time in new documents?

Thank you,

Steven

 

[Steven Hilgendorf]

I guess it depends what you and I consider a problem. I have been
working around this 'problem' for awhile now, hence my request for help.
Thank you for your suggestions.

Steven