Word funny...

[alexpgp]

It occurs to me that the { DATE } field in Word documents isn't tremendously useful, since it seems to always show the current date.

One might argue that it would be useful to show a date, on paper, on which a document was printed, but then you'd never be able to tell what that date was unless you looked at the paper (in other words, the file would be of no help).

Better to use, perhaps:

• { DATE } for the date on which the document was created;
• { PRINTDATE } for the date on which the document was last printed;
• { SAVEDATE } for the date on which the document was last saved.

Cheers...

Comments

[astroprisoner.livejournal.com]

You are correct sir, it's one of those Word features that seems to be useful at first glance, but then turns out to be absolutely horrid.

The only way I can see truly using it effectively is in the header field of a template for a letter...and only with the assumption that the writer will call up the template, write the letter, and then print out a hard copy.

I think one of the dirty little secrets about Word is that it's designed for use only in creating things like letters or very simple documents...and then it's marketed as being a tool for people who write complex documents.

At the company I work at now, I've been periodically getting tech manuals written by engineers using Word. The very first thing I do is convert them to FrameMaker. It takes some time to do the conversion, but in the long run it's a time saver.