Automatic Date (Word 2002 XP)

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Hello everyone:

Can anyone advise me on how I can get my document to use the automatic update for the “Date” without it being grayed out. This happens when I am sending the actual document via email. What am I doing wrong.

Best regards,

Happy holidays around the world!

Dillon65

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What do you mean by grayed out?

That the date has a gray background? That is governed by the Field Shading setting in Tools | Options…, View tab. This is an application-level setting, not a document-level setting, so if you turn off field shading, the recipient may still see it.

Or do you mean something else?

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Hello Hans:

Thank you for your quick response. No, I don’t mean anything else, your are correct with your answer. I was trying to find a simple way of inserting the date. I use this document on a daily basis, from your answer it would appear for me to just type in the date myself.

Thanks

dillon

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You could use a macro that inserts a DATE field, formatted to your specifications, updates it, then converts it to plain text. Would that be helpful? I think you actually could record this yourself using the Macro Recorder (Tools>Macro>Record). The main steps are:

Insert > Date and Time… — make sure to check the box to update automatically
Select to the left using the keyboard (Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow until selected)
Press F9 to update the field
Press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to “unlink” the field (convert it to plain text)
Press Right Arrow once to move the insertion point to the position just past the date

Stop recording and test whether it works a second time. When it’s good to go, you can assign a key combination to it using Tools>Customize… and the Keyboard button. It will be in the Macros list under Normal.NewMacros.Macro1 or something like that.

Hope this helps. After you get the hang of it, it can become addictive.

Reply | Quote

You could use a macro that inserts a DATE field, formatted to your specifications, updates it, then converts it to plain text. Would that be helpful? I think you actually could record this yourself using the Macro Recorder (Tools>Macro>Record). The main steps are:

Insert > Date and Time… — make sure to check the box to update automatically
Select to the left using the keyboard (Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow until selected)
Press F9 to update the field
Press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to “unlink” the field (convert it to plain text)
Press Right Arrow once to move the insertion point to the position just past the date

Stop recording and test whether it works a second time. When it’s good to go, you can assign a key combination to it using Tools>Customize… and the Keyboard button. It will be in the Macros list under Normal.NewMacros.Macro1 or something like that.

Hope this helps. After you get the hang of it, it can become addictive.

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Or if you feel uneasy about recording a macro, just leave it as a field and when you are ready to send it out, simply perform the Cntrl+Shift+F9 on the field to strip the field away.

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Or if you feel uneasy about recording a macro, just leave it as a field and when you are ready to send it out, simply perform the Cntrl+Shift+F9 on the field to strip the field away.

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Hello Hans:

Thank you for your quick response. No, I don’t mean anything else, your are correct with your answer. I was trying to find a simple way of inserting the date. I use this document on a daily basis, from your answer it would appear for me to just type in the date myself.

Thanks

dillon

Reply | Quote

What do you mean by grayed out?

That the date has a gray background? That is governed by the Field Shading setting in Tools | Options…, View tab. This is an application-level setting, not a document-level setting, so if you turn off field shading, the recipient may still see it.

Or do you mean something else?

Reply | Quote