How can I open older Word documents without the date being set to.

[Chris]

I need to print a lot of old word documents. How can I use the original date
rather than have word update to todays date? There are several hunderd
documents (legal)
Is there a regestry change or a key?

[Rob Schneider]

These documents probably have a date field in them to print the "print
date", rather than the a just a "plain old" text representation of the
then-current date. If so, that's how the author did it. You'll have to
edit the documents ... but then you may not want to be seen doing that
to these legal documents to change this field, especially since you may
or may not know the relevant date. Certainly dilemma. (this is what
happens when one keeps the source code documents vs. an electronic snap
shot copy of what was released, e.g. in PDF or other 'frozen' format).

If not a print field, then what date is being printed?

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

[Graham Mayor]

You'll have to change the date fields in the documents to createdate fields.
I just posted the following macro code in the menustoolbars newsgroup, which
changes the fields for the current document. If you want batch processing
you'll need to adapt the code provided on my web site and the mvp web site
to use this technique.

Sub FixDates()
'
' Replace Date fields with CreateDate fields
' Macro created 28/09/2004 by Graham Mayor

Dim FindText As String
Dim oStory As Range
Dim oField As Field

FindText = "^d DATE"
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
On Error GoTo oops

Documents.Add
Selection.Fields.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Type:=wdFieldEmpty, _
PreserveFormatting:=False
Selection.TypeText Text:="CREATEDATE \@ ""dd/MM/yyyy"""
Selection.WholeStory
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
Selection.Copy
ActiveDocument.Close SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges
ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = True

'Replace found text with the clipboard contents.
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = FindText
.Replacement.Text = "^c"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute replace:=wdReplaceAll

ActiveWindow.View.ShowFieldCodes = False
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
For Each oField In oStory.Fields
oField.Update
Next oField
Next oStory
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End
oops:
End Sub

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org