Hands On: Set a default date in Word

We've looked before at various ways of inserting dates into Word documents.

To recap briefly, if you use Insert, Date with the Automatically Update box unticked the current date or time will appear as unchanging text ­ just as if you had typed it in.

With the Update box checked, then a date field is inserted instead, which will update to the current date or time automatically when the document is saved, printed or re-opened or if the field is manually updated.

Usually, say when writing a letter, you don’t want this to happen, but there’s a neat way to get the best of both worlds.

Select Insert, Field, (in 2007, Insert, Quick Parts, Field) and choose CreateDate, then save as a template.

All documents based on that template will appear with the creation date of the document (ie the date or time the document was first saved) rather than that of the template.

Although the creation date is a field, it won’t ever change.

One useful trick in Word is that you don’t have to choose a date and time format every time you insert a date. You can select any of the available formats and click the Default button. Next time you insert a date, this format will be pre-selected, though you can override this by selecting a different format.

Openoffice Writer offers similar facilities in a more roundabout way. If you Insert, Fields, Date, you’ll get a plain dd/mm/yy (eg 11/06/08) date that will stay fixed.

For more options, go to Insert, Fields, Other, turn to the Documents tab, and select Date from the list on the left. In the middle column you’ll find a choice of Date and Date (fixed) that corresponds to the Word ‘Automatically Update’ option, and in the right column a wide choice of formats.

There’s also an intriguing ‘Offset’ option where setting this to 1 will produce the next day’s date, and -1 the previous day, and so on. If you don’t see what you want in the list of formats, scroll down to the bottom of the list and choose ‘Additional Formats…’.

This produces another dialogue giving a slightly longer list, but you also get the opportunity to design your own formats ­ with comments ­ and add them to that list. If you press the Help button you’ll find you can use week numbers, weekday names, quarters, eras and so on.

What isn’t present is a way of setting the default date or time format ­ Insert, Fields, Date always produces the dd/mm/yy style. One way round this is to start the macro recorder, insert the date in the required format as above, then stop the macro recorder. Writer will prompt you to name and save the macro, so you could call this ‘Today’ and save it in My Macros, Standard. Having done that, go to Tools, Customise, Menus.

Choose the Insert Menu, then click the Add button. In the ‘Add Commands’ dialogue, choose ‘OpenOffice.org Macros’, and navigate down until your Today macro appears in the right-hand pane.

Click Add, close the ‘Add commands’ dialogue, OK out of the Customise dialogue and your Today macro will be on the top level of the Insert menu, giving you the date in the format you recorded. You can also use the Customise dialogue to put the macro on a toolbar or assign a key combination.