Inserting "tomorrow's" date
ausdan
I have a template which I use often. I can insert today's date. However
is it possible to insert another date (e.g. tomorrow's) which will
update automatically whenever I open the document eg. If I open the
template today, the date up the top of the page will read tomorrow's
date or if I view it next Saturday, it will show Sunday's date.
I am using Office 2004.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Danny Parker
ausdan
Michel Bintener
sure you tick that little checkbox towards the bottom which reads "Update
automatically". This inserts a date field that automatically displays the
current date, i.e. if you open that same document tomorrow, you will see
tomorrow's date.
On 25/10/06 11:22, in article
1161768160.8...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com, "ausdan"
<aus...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Entourage & Word)
***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
PhilD
Michel Bintener wrote:
> In Word, click on Insert>Date and Time. In the window that shows up, make
> sure you tick that little checkbox towards the bottom which reads "Update
> automatically". This inserts a date field that automatically displays the
> current date, i.e. if you open that same document tomorrow, you will see
> tomorrow's date.
I'm not sure that is what the other person wants. I think the other
person wants a field showing "today+1", that automatically updates. I
am sure that this must be possible, but I don't know how!
PhilD
--
<><
John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]
Yes, you need to insert your DATE field in a "Formula" field. Look up
Formula Field in the Word Help.
The Date field is in days, add the number of days you wish. Every time you
open the document, the date will be recomputed to be your specified number
of days in the future (or the past, if you subtract days).
Cheers
On 25/10/06 7:22 PM, in article
1161768160.8...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com, "ausdan"
<aus...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <jo...@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
Elliott Roper
<m.bin...@NOSPAMmvps.org> wrote:
> In Word, click on Insert>Date and Time. In the window that shows up, make
> sure you tick that little checkbox towards the bottom which reads "Update
> automatically". This inserts a date field that automatically displays the
> current date, i.e. if you open that same document tomorrow, you will see
> tomorrow's date.
If you are too impatient for Michel's solution, and really want
tomorrow's date today, then you have to go to a bit more trouble.
I tried without success to use formula fields on a date field to up it
by one. It *might* be possible, but I could not find anything that did
not bleat "invalid bookmark" at me.
I'd be interested in learning how to do arithmetic on dates inside Word
too.
The only way I can think of doing it is a creative application of mail
merge. Create an Excel spreadsheet with the appropriate date arithmetic
and suitable column headings as your data source. No sane person would
do this unless you were already doing a merge for some other reason, or
it was part of some automated workflow churning out documents like
sausages.
>
>
> On 25/10/06 11:22, in article
> 1161768160.8...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com, "ausdan"
> <aus...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone.
> >
> > I have a template which I use often. I can insert today's date. However
> > is it possible to insert another date (e.g. tomorrow's) which will
> > update automatically whenever I open the document eg. If I open the
> > template today, the date up the top of the page will read tomorrow's
> > date or if I view it next Saturday, it will show Sunday's date.
> >
> > I am using Office 2004.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any advice,
> >
> > Danny Parker
> >
--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248
Peter Jamieson
macropod.
They are enormously complicated but they do the job, at least on the Windows
version of Word.
I thinnk they are still available at
http://www.wopr.com/cgi-bin/w3t/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=wrd&Number=249902
One reason they are complicated is because they try to deal with the general
case of adding an arbitrary number of days to a date. If it's just one day,
things are potentially simpler, but not much prettier, because you have to
split the date into day, month and year, see if the year changes, see if the
month changes, and deal with Feb 28 in leap years and non-leap years.
Peter Jamieson
"ausdan" <aus...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1161768134.4...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Peter Jamieson
it on Mac, but most of the necessary elements seem to ork so I would guess
that making it all work is at most a matter of tweaking stuff.
It would of course be nice if {=} could operate on date (and text) fields as
well as numeric ones, but it doesn't. But you should be able to
a. extract individual parts of a date using e.g. { SET D { DATE \@DD } }{
SET M \@MM }{ SET Y \@YYYY }
b. use { =} on the resulting fields, e.g. { =D+1 }
c. reconstruct a "date" field using e.g. { SET R "{ REF Y }-{ REF M }-{ REF
D }" } so you can apply the standard date formatting switch \@
Unfortunately, that doesn't get you very far with dates because of course
the calculations have to take account of varying days per month and leap
years - hence Macropod's stuff.
One thing to bear in mind when doing date calculations in Word is that Word
recalculates different types of fields at different times so in some
circumstances date calculations may not give the results you might expect.
I include the following stuff for completeness' sake, but I can't say I'd
recommend anyone to use any of it...
On Mac, as far as I can see, you can also get tomorrow's date into Word
using Excel, if you have it. However, I don't especially like this method
because it involves linking to a worksheet, updating the field is even less
automatic, and you can't "fix" the result of the calculation by e.g. basing
the calculation on the Word document's CREATEDATE rather than its DATE.
But for example,
a. Create an Excel sheet called dates.xls
b. Insert today()+1 in cell A1 (Excel really disliked it when I did this
befoe saving myworkbook, so I'd avoid that although I suspect it was a
one-off problem. Or maybe there's another function you should use instead of
today())
c. If you want, select the cell and define a range name using
Insert|Name|Define, call it "tomorrow", click Add
d. Select the cell, Edit|Copy
e. In Word, Edit|Paste Special, select Paste Link and Unformatted text. You
should see a field like
{ LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "Macintosh HD:Users:me:Documents:dates.xls"
"Sheet1|tomorrow" \a \t }
if necessary, you can nest this inside a SET field and play around with it
even more.
On Windows Word, by far and away the simplest way (in the sense that it only
involves one field and a fairly simple date calculation syntax) is to
manipulate dates using fields rather than VBA is to use a DATABASE field
that connects to a data source that uses a dialect of SQL that makes it easy
to do date calculations, such as Jet SQL. In effect, you use a DATABASE
field to execute VBA date functions via Jet SQL. When you return a single
cell (only one column in the results, and no header), Word inserts a plain
text result rather than a table. But
a. I don't think anything on Mac Word 2004 lets you do that
b. even on Windows, the behaviour of the DATABASE field was arbitrarily
changed in Word 2003 so that it sometimes inserts a paragraph mark as part
of a plain text (as opposed to tabular) result
c. it also involves a dependency because there has to be an external file
of some kind.
Peter Jamieson
"Elliott Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote in message
news:251020061253511044%nos...@yrl.co.uk...
Peter Jamieson
Unfortunately, Formula fields {=} fields don't do date calculations. You can
only operate on the separate parts of a date as I've suggested in a couple
of nearby messages. Unless of course you know the magic word!
Peter Jamieson
"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <jo...@mcghie.name> wrote in
message news:C165823F.4F516%jo...@mcghie.name...
Elliott Roper
<p...@KillmapSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Did you ever try macropod's stuff (see my nearby message)? I haven't tried
> it on Mac, but most of the necessary elements seem to ork so I would guess
> that making it all work is at most a matter of tweaking stuff.
I have now. What a fiendish fellow! Here's me thinking Macropodidae is
the kangaroo & wallaby family. This one is one hop ahead.
Hours of innocent fun coming up!
<snip>
..some of those database methods make my and your Excel kluges look
like child's play.
Isn't it strange that Excel has better string handling functions than
Word?
This discussion reinforces the impression I have that Word just keeps
being made 'simpler' till it collapses under its own weight. As soon as
you try to go past a certain level, it becomes harder than a hard
thing.
It makes TeX and LaTeX look elegant and straightforward at this level.
Peter Jamieson
Database methods? I thought his were all field calculations? But no
matter...
> Isn't it strange that Excel has better string handling functions than
> Word?
It's certainly a frustration, but since there's a sense in which anything
except trivial use of a spreadsheet involves programming with functions
etc., whereas a word processor can be useful even without "traditional"
programming, perhaps it's not surprising if Excel is ahead.
Peter Jamieson
"Elliott Roper" <nos...@yrl.co.uk> wrote in message
news:251020061434041724%nos...@yrl.co.uk...
John McGhie
components of the date if you want to calculate them in a field.
Cheers
"Peter Jamieson" <p...@KillmapSpjjnet.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:uU$tJ1C%23GHA...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...