Print Date in Header/Footer (Word 97/2000)

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I have had a number of people ask the following:

I have a manual divided into sections. It is a controlled document and needs to show what date a specific page was printed on. I can put a printdate field into the header, but obviously this changes throughout the entire document, even if only one page was printed. What I really want, is for the date to change only on the printed pages. That is, if I print all of section 1 on the 1st of October that date will appear in the header. If I subsequently print only pages 4, 6 and 7 on the 25th of October that the date shows (25/10/2001) but only on pages 4, 6 and 7 and all other pages still show 1/10/2001.

I don’t actually believe this is possible, but I’d love to hear any comments.

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To have such a date actually in the header, you would have to make every page a separate section. This has so many drawbacks that I’d never consider it seriously.

If you’re willing to put up with a textbox anchored in the text and placed in the header area, that might be doable. You could intercept the File/Print command with a macro that does a Dialogs(wdDialogFilePrint).Display, figures out which pages are to be printed, and inserts the current date in the textbox before saving and then printing.

The system is likely to be “twitchy” but it might work. Does this document ever get edited? What happens if that editing causes the pagination to change? (The answer to this could affect where the textbox needs to be anchored.)

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Hi Jay, we’ve been through those options and discarded them as not being worthwhile – you may as well use a typewriter (well almost!) I think we’ll stick with saying the entire section has been amended and having a date actually typed into the section’s header.

Thanks anyway.

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