How can I turn off automatic date update on opening documents

Anonymous
2011-05-10T12:06:19+00:00

Original Title: Word 2010

How can I turn off automatic date update on opening documents.  I need to retain the dates letters were written.  Step by step if possible!

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Suzanne S Barnhill 279.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2011-05-10T12:26:24+00:00

The instructions are the same for letters and for templates, but if you are basing your letters on a template that includes a DATE field, then make the change in the template and you'll never have to do it in a letter again.

The reason that the date updates is that it is a DATE field, which always provides the current system date. What you want is a different field, the CREATEDATE field, which is updated once, when you create the document, and then stays the same forever after. You can read more about these and other fields at http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/datefields.htm.

To change your DATE field to a CREATEDATE field, press Alt+F9 to display the field code. Then just type CREATE before DATE, press Alt+F9 to toggle back, and press F9 to update.

If you put a CREATEDATE field in a document template, the template itself will always display the date it was created, but when you create a new document based on the template, the document will display the date IT was created. The nice thing about this is that the date that the document was created is stored within it at creation, so you can change a DATE field to CREATEDATE at any time to recover that original date even if the DATE field has updated to the current date.

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Charles Kenyon 170.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2012-08-13T19:28:21+00:00

How about this? Select date, right click, check "Preserve date". But that would be too simple, and there would be less need for de-obfuscators.

And how, exactly, does this help someone who has a document, created on a different day with a DATE field? Are you suggesting a change to Word rather than explaining to someone who has a problem how to fix it?

Preserve date might be less cryptic in this instance than "Unlink field," but it does not give you the original date. Assume a document written with a DATE field on October 23, 2009, saved as a new document on July 11, 2010, and today is August 13, 2012. What date is to be preserved? How do you tell the computer?

The best method, as I believe Suzanne mentioned is to have a template using the CreateDate field to start with. The next best solution is to manually change the field to a CreateDate field or unlink the field when the document is created so that it is plain text. Going backwards is always going to be a bit iffy, whether done manually or by some right-click menu choice.

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  1. Charles Kenyon 170.9K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-11-21T21:46:37+00:00

    This has nothing, whatsoever, to operating in a template environment other than that documents created from a template inherit its contents.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-21T14:26:59+00:00

    Yes, I like hedging my bets either way :)     Your comments are well-taken, but the nut of this for most people (aside from not educating themselves, as you suggest) is the lack of easily-accessible explanations that tell users what is happening.   My frustration was rooted in templates that stubbornly refused to do what I wanted, but the problem was that I didn't know I was operating in a template environment.

    How easy would it be to simply inform users, "Hey, you're working in a template where things happen sometimes automatically.  Here's what you can do to fix the problem you're having...."

    We live in a world of dynamic help these days in many other aspects of daily life; why not WORD?

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-21T11:45:23+00:00

    If you don't check the box, the date is inserted as text, just as if you had typed it from the keyboard, and that doesn't update. This has been true from the earliest of Word versions. If you tick the box the date is inserted as a date field, which reads the system date from the PC. You can easily verify that by toggling the display of fields with ALT+F9. The plain text date doesn't change. the field Shows  {  DATE @ "dd/MM/yyyy" }. Your choice of checkbox setting is retained between uses.

    The problem with either of these is when you are creating documents from templates that automatically insert the date, when neither is suitable. You don't want the date the template was created when you create a new document, and you don't want the date to be updated each time the fields are updated in the document.

    The answer is to use a CREATEDATE field in the template which always shows the date the document was created - regardless of what date the template was created.

    This is not 'programming'. It is using the additional tools Word provides to give the functionality that you require in your documents.

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