Microsoft Word - Time Stamp

[wrightyrx7]

Hello All,

I have a merged document with all the fields setup and a time stamp which inserts todays date.

Once a document is merged the time stamp is inserted/updated. This document is then saved (Save As) for back-up. When we come to open the document in the future the timestamp updates and we do not know when we sent the letter.

Is there any suggestions to overcome this.

Please note the information is input into the fields/document by the software we use, and not from a spreadsheet. So we cannot just input a column with todays date in.

If you need any more information please let me know.

Regards
Chris

 

[Macropod]

Hi Chris,

When you do a milmerge with a DATE field, the field generally remains active in the output document. You can prevent that by embedding the DATE field in a QUOTE field. To do so,
open the mailmerge main document and select the DATE field. Then press Ctrl-F9 to create another field around the DATE field. You should see something like { DD/MM/YYYY }. Now add 'QUOTE' to the field so that you end up with {QUOTE DD/MM/YYYY }, then press F9 to update the field. From now on, when you run the mailmerge, the output dates will be converted to plain text.

For your existing letters, you may be able to retrieve the original date by changing the DATE fields to CREATEDATE or PRINTDATE fields. To do this, open the document and press Alt-F9 to expose the field codes. Now do a Find/Replace, to change all instances of 'DATE' to either 'CREATEDATE' or 'PRINTDATE'. Use 'CREATEDATE' if the file was saved using Save As, or 'PRINTDATE' if the file wasn't saved that way but was printed at that time (before saving) and hasn't been saved again since any subsequent re-prints. Then press Alt-F9, Ctrl-A, F9, to toggle the field codes back to the normal display and update them. If the output is now correct, press Ctrl-A, Ctrl-Shift-F9 to convert them to plain text.