Dates may be inserted into Word documents by a
variety of methods, the two principle ones being:
-
The 'insert >
date' tool - which inserts the current date as text, or as a field
which displays the system date (pity Microsoft didn't think to use this
to insert the far more useful CREATEDATE field).
-
Insert a date field (ALT+SHIFT+D), or one of
the more specialized alternatives: CREATEDATE, PRINTDATE,
SAVEDATE, TIME.
But what if
you want to insert a date other than today's date? What if you want to display a date 14 days from
today (or 7 days earlier)?
You might think a simple field calculation of DATE + 14 might do
the trick, but try this:
{={Date} + 14}
or
{={Date \@ "dd MMM
yyyy"} - 7} and all you'll manage is an error message.
You can produce a result of sorts by using {={Date
\@ "dd"}+14} and this will add 14 to the 'day' part of
today's date, but try it in the last couple of weeks of the month and
you'll quickly see the snag. The 44th of October might raise a few
eyebrows.
It is possible to construct a field combination
that will provide the required result, but it is so complex that you
will not want work it out for yourself. Fortunately the work has been
done for you by fellow Word MVP Paul Edstein and is available for
download from this site at
Third Party Downloads where you will find an assortment of date calculations you can use or
adapt. This really is a superb piece of work and an object lesson in
what can be done with date fields.
Staying with the example of today plus 14 days,
the code required for the task is reproduced as follows. For ease of
understanding each line is separated by a line break: -
The original field construction as shown in the linked
article, uses a DATE field. I have changed this to a CREATEDATE field,
which I suspect most closely reflects the real world use of such a
calculation. The parts shown in red are the delay (14 days - which could
equally be a negative number for a date before today) and the
format of the finished date as displayed in the document.
A simpler
solution may be to use a macro
to place the date. The following was written to provide a wide range of
flexibility. The default (which you can change) is set at 14 days in the
future, but you can insert and number, including negative numbers, to
insert a date counted from that number before or after today's date.
