When I store a dated Word document on my PC (XP) and later retrieve it
I find that the date on the original stored piece has been changed to
today's date. This is driving me nuts as it destroys the history of
the document. I have already unchecked the "automatic update" box in
the "Date and Time" field. Any ideas?

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Clarification of Question by alan10-ga on 11 Dec 2005 20:56 PST

More complicated than I thought! What I'm having trouble with is
retrieving letters that I have saved. For example if I write a letter
on 1 January, 2005, and open it up again in Dec 2005 to make a copy of
it I don't want to see it redate itself automatically to 11 Dec, 2005.
I want to have that letter come back to me exactly as I wrote it. This
is important because I may need to use that letter in some legal
matter which requires it to be like the original. Currently, if I
retrieve it and then erase the date and put in the earlier date
manually I find that it changes back to today's date if I print it.
Does this clarify anything??

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Clarification of Question by alan10-ga on 20 Dec 2005 08:33 PST

I've been doing some experimentation using Rob's suggestion of the
"create date" and "save date" options with some success and I can now
write something which doesn't change date when I open it for printing.
Unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem for documents already
stored which show up in the file with their original dates when I put
the arrow to them but change to today's date when I open them. This
means that I can open a stored document, change its date back to what
it was and then put it back into storage. I can't believe the system
is supposed to make life that difficult! The documents I'm referring
to are derived from letter templates.

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Request for Question Clarification by cynthia-ga on 22 Dec 2005 01:02 PST

I may have found (by accident) a solution for you. Bear with me while I explain.

I downloaded "Google Desktop" the other day:

Google Desktop
http://desktop.google.com/?promo=mp-gds-v1-1

Then, over the past few days I have played with it and discovered you
can add features to it (plugins) like Firefox has:

Google Desktop Plugins
http://desktop.google.com/plugins

While browsing plugins, I ran into this plugin:

Gds File Revision History (Gds = Google Desktop Search)
http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/filerevision.html
..." Gds File Revision History is a Plug-In which allows you to
retrieve old versions of files cached in Gds. You can see what you
have changed and when. The Plug In adds a new entry in the right click
menu of Excel, Word, Power Point, html, text and xml files to retrieve
the revision history from Gds. Once selected it displays the dates on
when the file has been changed and once you click on any of them will
display the version cached in Gds. It is very simple and quick to
use..."


I urge you to follow these links, install --and give this a try. I
think it's just what you need. There is a slight learning curve (not
much) with the Google Desktop, then with installing plugins (again-not
much) but if this in an important task for you, it would be well worth
it.

Let me know,

~~Cynthia

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Request for Question Clarification by hedgie-ga on 29 Dec 2005 15:07 PST

Would advice: 
"Switch to linux based OpenOffice word processor"
be acceptable as an answer?
 It does all MS words does - but it knows who is the boss.

 For me that solves many irritations of this type. 
http://www.openoffice.org/

You may need to be more specific about which date you mean and exactly
what you mean by retrieve (open the document?).  This may be your
solution anyway.  Every windows file has 3 datetime stamps; created,
modified, and accessed.  Right-click on the file in explorer and
select properties and you will see all the times.

Most likely, your history has not been destroyed at all. Created is
when you first made that file, modified is the last time you made
changes, and accessed is the last time the file was "touched" for any
reason. Beware that moving the file to another computer through email
will cause those dates to change in curious ways and cause time shifts
wherein the created time appears younger than the modified time.

Hope this is your solution.

If you mean within the doc itself rather than on the file when you
view it in Explorer, you might have selected an automatic date field
(for example, in a header) that changes when you open the doc.  You
want to manually control the date that appears in the file so that you
know when you're looking at the latest version or a printout of it. 
Is this what you're talking about?

Archae0pteryx

Alan, this only happens to me when using the "memo" feature in Word.
When I make a "blank document" in Word it just saves it exactly as I
typed it. Are you making memos by any chance?

If all else fails, save the creation date as part of the filename. 
This is a worse case scenario but deposition(10-24-05).doc isn't a
terrible filename.

Alan,

I thought it was something like that--something within your file
content.  How is the date getting put onto the letter?  Are you using
some kind of automated form or template, or a macro, or a
header/footer field?  If you typed the date manually as ordinary
undifferentiated text, nothing should change it.  So I'm thinking it's
automated somehow.

Archae0pteryx

When using Word 2003, you can insert dates which update in the way you
want. Go to  'Insert' then 'Field' choose 'date & time' from the
categories drop down list. You can then choose the date format you
require and also the 'update type' from the field names box.

I tried 'Create Date' and it did keep the original document date. I
also tried 'Saved Date' and  the date updated when ever i saved,
closed and re-opened the document. This also worked in headers and
footers.

Hope this helps,

Rob

This might be sort of circling around the issue/problem, however here
is a thought...

If you have finished a letter and only need to open it for viewing in
the future, why not make the file read-only in the opperating system
(set the file attributes to read-only by right-clicking on the file in
Windows Explorer).

That way MS Word will not be able to modify the document.

Another way is to remove the tag from the document. Look to the right,
when you hover over the document a menu should appear click on it and
you should have the option to remove tag. For the future when entering
dates in MS word and it is asking or suggesting the date do not accept
it.

Use Microsoft Word Viewer, it lets you view a word doc, but doesnt let you save it.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=95e24c87-8732-48d5-8689-ab826e7b8fdf&DisplayLang=en