Weird CreateDate field behavior

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Dawn Rhoads - 22 Mar 2004 18:36 GMT

Does anyone know anything about a change in behavior for
the createdate field? I checked the knowledgebase and
couldn't find anything on it.

I have several forms templates that use a "createdate"
field. They were created in Word 2002 sometime last
year. They work fine -- when opening a document based on
the template, we get the date the *document* was created.
I am now updating several other templates to use this
same "createdate" field (instead of just a regular date
field that always updates to the current date no matter
when you open it.)

Here's what's weird. The createdate field that I insert
into the new forms is not reliably updating to the
creation date of the document -- it seems to be keeping
the creation date of the underlying template. What's so
odd is that I can even copy the field from one of my
functioning forms, put it into a new form, and find that
it's still not working right.

The field will sometimes update when I have a locked
document and I tab for the first time between fill-in
fields. But... knowing our users, not all of them will
tab through the fields, many will immediately unlock and
then start filling in information by overwriting the
fields. Which would mean their "createdate" field will
stay screwed up.

In some test documents I made on Friday, now the fields
won't even update after I tab through fill in fields --
the ONLY way to get it to update is to hit F9. Yikes!

Printing doesn't update the field (we have to have "update
fields" unchecked in our preference -- otherwise Word
clears out fill-in fields where we've typed in
information. So very handy.) Manually updating with F9
seems to work, but I know NO ONE will do that.

I just can't figure out why I'm getting different behavior
in older forms vs. ones I'm trying to make right now. I
have the same computer configuration now as I had then
(Word 2002, Office XP). The only possible changes I can
think of are service packs and my printer driver is now
different.

Any thoughts would be welcomed.

Thanks,
Dawn Rhoads

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Charles Kenyon - 22 Mar 2004 23:01 GMT

Hi,

I've been working with CreateDate fields for at least six years in Word
97-2003. The behavior of these fields is very predictable and does not match
what you are describing. The behavior I've observed is:

When placed in any document, it will display the creation date of that
document. This is true even if placed in the document months after the
document is created.

If you use Save As to save the document, the creation date for the document
will change but a CreateDate field _in the body_ of the document will not
automatically update to the new date. It has to be updated manually or with
a macro. In a protected form it cannot be updated manually while the
document is protected. A CreateDate field _in the header or footer_ will
update when the document is printed or is viewed in Print Preview.

If you have it in a template and create a new document based on the
template, the field will display the creation date of the new document.
Again, this is true whether it is a protected form or not. If you _open_ the
template and use Save As to save to a new name, the field will not update
automatically. This is not the proper way to be using a template. I suspect
that it is this last situation your users are experiencing. I suspect that
the dates that you've seen updating in such documents are in the headers or
footers. You can create a new document based on a template by using File =>
New or by double-clicking on the template from Windows.

By the way, you don't tab between fill-in fields. You do tab between form
fields (which are filled in). A fill-in field pops up a message box asking
you for information and takes what is typed and puts it into the document.
I'm pointing this out not because your term is wrong (it is a sensible thing
to call one of these fields), it is just that for those experienced with
Word fields, "fill-in field" means something else.

Hope my guesses were correct and that this helps.

Signature

> Does anyone know anything about a change in behavior for
> the createdate field? I checked the knowledgebase and
[quoted text clipped - 46 lines]
> Thanks,
> Dawn Rhoads

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Dawn Rhoads - 23 Mar 2004 18:39 GMT

I appreciate your thoughts, Charles, but unfortunately
none of those are what's going on. And the "normal"
behavior of a createdate field is obviously what I've
normally observed as well -- we have probably a hundred
documents using it right now. This new weirdness is
really making me nuts!

I thought I had maybe identified the problem yesterday,
but upon testing my templates this morning one of the four
I'm testing still does not work properly. I discovered
that I had accidentally saved the several documents that I
was working on as ".doc" files instead of .dot. (That's
something weird my computer seems to be doing all of a
sudden as well, it used to be when I opened a template
file and made changes to it, when I saved it, it would
automatically save as the original file type (that
is, .dot) but for whatever reason lately, it defaults
to .doc and if I don't catch it it saves in that format.
Very odd. I can't for the life of me find a setting or
something that I might have changed to make this
differece.) Now, used to be, that as long as you accessed
a file from the templates dialog box (using File --> New)
the item seemed to behave like a template regardless of
it's underlying format. But in this case, I found that it
made a difference when I re-saved the documents as .dot
files. Voila, the createdate field behaved properly
(hooray) In all but *one* of my test files. (Grrrr!) I
can't imagine why one would behave differently from the
others. It's maddening.

The only difference I can identify between my working and
non-working test documents is that in the non-working
document (by "non-working" I mean the createdate is
incorrect unless I manually go in and press F9) the form
fields are all placed AFTER the create date. This doesn't
really make any sense as the culprit, I don't think,
because the hundred or so forms we're currently using that
work right are also this way (it just so happens that the
next hundred that I'm about to modify generally have form
fields at the beginning of the document before the
createdate field, so that's why I tested both instances).

I always save templates in either my templates directory
or in our workgroup. Then we access the templates by the
File --> New, as you mentioned (actually, we normally use
a button on a toolbar to get to file --> new, but I don't
think that makes any difference)

Thanks for the reminder on the term "form field" vs. "fill
in field" -- I can never keep those straight. We pretty
much only use field types off the forms toolbar, so I'm
not too familiar with the other ones.

Anyway, I've saved yet another test document to see what
happens tomorrow (I can't think of a way to test the
createdate functioning without waiting a day). If it
works, guess I will tentatively go forward with converting
my other documents, making sure to save as a .dot file
along the way.

If any of this prompts any more thoughts, I'd welcome any
additional ideas. Thanks again for trying to help!

--Dawn Rhoads

>-----Original Message-----
>Hi,
[quoted text clipped - 85 lines]
>
>.

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 24 Mar 2004 01:00 GMT

Further suspicions,

A .dot file that can be saved as a document is _not_ a Word template. It is
a document that has been renamed in Windows to have a .doc extension. There
is more to a template than the .dot extension and Word knows the difference.

One way to verify this may be to attempt to save AutoText to the suspect
.dot file. Another would be to check for the attached template under
Templates and Add-Ins. (I haven't tested these, just tossing ideas out.)

Such a file, if saved as a template will become a Word template and should
act normally.

> I appreciate your thoughts, Charles, but unfortunately
> none of those are what's going on. And the "normal"
[quoted text clipped - 186 lines]
> >
> >.

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Dawn Rhoads - 24 Mar 2004 02:34 GMT

Hm, interesting. Good tip. I tried this test on my
misbehaving "template" and, indeed, I am unable to save
autotext to it. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, once
it gets that .dot extension, by all outward indications it
looks like a template (uses a template icon, when hovering
over the file name in the "open" dialog box it
says "Type: Microsoft Word Template"). As you suspected,
all the templates that are functioning properly will allow
me to save autotext to them, so sounds like they
are "really" templates. Bummer if attempting to add
autotext is the only way for me to reliably identify it!
(I did not try your suggestion about checking for the
attached template since I wasn't too sure what that
meant. I know where the templates and add-ins dialog box
is, I just wasn't sure what I would be looking for.)

So... this must be related somehow to this recent unusual
behavior I have noticed when I work on template files. Do
you have any ideas on why when I go to save a template
file that I've been modifying, Word has been, without
asking, saving it as a .doc file? This happens even for
those files that I've determined are "really" templates.
If there are any autotext entries in the file it will warn
me what it's doing, but if there are no autotexts in that
file it just does saves the file with a .doc without
telling me what it's doing. I have found that I now have
to manually go down and choose .dot, then re-navigate to
the appropriate folder, and save the file. When initially
opening the files I use the File --> Open menu.
(Incidentally, I've been doing this for years and not had
problems like this. This started in the last few weeks.
I thought it must be related to a service pack our Tech
Support team recently installed, or some preference that
I'd unwittingly changed.) I did find a "default format"
in the Tools--> Options, which is set to .doc, but there
doesn't seem to be any way to indicate that I want each
file to be saved as whatever it started out as.

Does this actually sound like some hinky virus or
something yucky like that? I know a collegue who's had
similar problems since before mine started (I've been
teaching her how to work on our forms, and it seemed like
her computer worked differently than mine in how it saved
templates, but we couldn't figure out why. I really just
thought it must be some combination of preference settings
that I couldn't identify yet.)

Thanks again for your thoughts and ideas so far, I sure to
appreciate it! It's hardly handy, but at least I can use
the autotext thing as a double-check to try to make sure
my resulting documents are "really" templates! :) If
anything else comes to mind after reading this latest, I'd
love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,
Dawn

>-----Original Message-----
>Further suspicions,
[quoted text clipped - 197 lines]
>> >> Thanks,
>> >> Dawn Rhoads

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Charles Kenyon - 24 Mar 2004 21:24 GMT

To Windows, all .dot files are templates. To Word, the extension is only a
tool. A template with a .doc extension (renamed in Windows) will be treated
as a template by Word, and as a document by Windows.

Signature

> Hm, interesting. Good tip. I tried this test on my
> misbehaving "template" and, indeed, I am unable to save
[quoted text clipped - 315 lines]
> >> >> Thanks,
> >> >> Dawn Rhoads

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 24 Mar 2004 21:28 GMT

The simple way to identify it is to try Save As...

Usually the default file type for Word to save a document file is as a
document.

If you can save it as a .doc file it is not a template, no matter what the
extension is. I created a similar problem for myself some time back,
renaming a bunch of form documents that I wanted to use as templates. In DOS
I used the rename command and changed the extension. As you said, that
changed the icon and how Windows treated a double-click. Since they were in
the templates folder and I accessed them using File => New, they seemed to
be templates within Word as well. I discovered the problem when someone I
worked with used File Open and Save As, and was able to save as a document.

Signature

> Hm, interesting. Good tip. I tried this test on my
> misbehaving "template" and, indeed, I am unable to save
[quoted text clipped - 315 lines]
> >> >> Thanks,
> >> >> Dawn Rhoads

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Dawn Rhoads - 24 Mar 2004 23:24 GMT

Unfortunately, this is *not* true for me. (I'm on Word
2002, by the way if that makes any difference)

To test and make sure it's not the particular documents
I'm working with, I just went ahead and created a brand
spanking new template (opened a blank document, did a save
as, and chose "word template" as the type) and closed it.
Then re-opened it and added some text and tried saving
it. I get the same message that "saving in this format
will delete all autotext entries" and sure enough, if I do
a save as, the document type it is trying to save as is a
regular .doc. I can choose .dot from the save as window
and it will save as a template (I can re-open and add
autotext, as you suggested trying). I've tried opening
the document in all different manners (file/open, using
the file/open button, opening from Windows Explorer) all
with the same result.

Even if I changed my Tools/Options settings for the
default file format to be .dot, I get this same result!
The only difference is that the first time I save the
document, it will default to be a .dot. But after that, I
get this same craziness where it tries to make my template
into a .doc automatically.

I'm sure you're reading this and thinking it can't
possibly be doing as I'm saying, that I must be doing
something weird. It sounds nuts to me too.

Well, again, any thoughts you might have are appreciated.
I really appreciate your help so far, you've certainly
helped me figure out the source of the difficulties with
my createdate field! (After re-testing today, by the way,
my "actual" templates that have the createdate field in
them are working just fine. Thanks!) Now... if only I
can figure out why Word is acting nuts with my templates.
I guess I at least know how to work around it, by always
doing a "save as", choosing "template" and re-navigating
to the correct folder. Yuck.

>-----Original Message-----
>The simple way to identify it is to try Save As...
[quoted text clipped - 331 lines]
>
>.

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 25 Mar 2004 16:07 GMT

Hi Dawn,

I'm sorry. I was mistaken. I just checked in Word 2003 and you can save a
template as a document!

The last time I tried saving a template as a document, the type document was
not available. I just checked Word 97 and Word 2000 and in those versions
the only type available to save a template using Save As is template. The
box for changing types is disabled. I was not aware that this had changed.

You could put the following macro into a global template and attach it to
either a custom toolbar button or a keyboard shortcut in that template. Then
use it to test your templates.

Sub TemplateTest()
Dim strType As String
If ActiveDocument.Type = wdTypeTemplate Then
strType = "template."
ElseIf ActiveDocument.Type = wdTypeDocument Then
strType = "document."
Else
strType = "frameset."
End If
MsgBox "This is a " & strType
End Sub

Sorry again for leading you down a blind alley. Hope this helps.

Signature

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
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--

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

> Unfortunately, this is *not* true for me. (I'm on Word
> 2002, by the way if that makes any difference)
[quoted text clipped - 463 lines]
> >
> >.

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