How do I include text AND avoid the "links" dialog box?

[Dan Stenzel]

I am using WORD 2003, and we use Word for a lot of our internal
documentation. At the top of the documentation we list our current director
and cio for the organization. These positions change on occasion, and rather
than try to update 100 documents, I would like to just include the name of
the individual, or a pre-set header with both of their names. A number of
people within the organization use these documents, and it is not acceptable
that the Word dialog box:
"This document contains links that may refer to other files. Do you want to
update this document with the data from the linked files?"
would constantly appear, and if the user clicked "yes" the modify date of
the document changes. (we do track the modify date on the document using the
"Insert -> Field -> SaveDate" feature).

In our HTML files, we used javascript to insert their names, and that worked
nicely. How can I, in Word, use a similar central "repository" of information
for the Director and CIO and avoid the dialog box?

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

I am using WORD 2003, and we use Word for a lot of our internal
documentation. At the top of the documentation we list our current director
and cio for the organization.

That's a rather interesting place, to mention these people in "internal
documentation." [One should think that the people working there knew who
the bosses were ]

These positions change on occasion, and rather
than try to update 100 documents, I would like to just include the name of
the individual, or a pre-set header with both of their names. A number of
people within the organization use these documents, and it is not acceptable
that the Word dialog box:
"This document contains links that may refer to other files. Do you want to
update this document with the data from the linked files?"
would constantly appear, and if the user clicked "yes" the modify date of
the document changes. (we do track the modify date on the document using the
"Insert -> Field -> SaveDate" feature).

I don't know how to avoid that question as long as you are using
INCLUDETEXT. Given that the people may change from time to time, you
might look for a different solution. You could cross reference a
document property or document variable and run a change script overnight
in case of a change. The following code might help you there:

How to Find & ReplaceAll on a batch of documents in the same folder (by
Ibby)
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm

You may test before whether the cross references update automatically
upon reopening of the documents (I would guess so), and whether this
triggers a different SAVEDATE (unfortunatly, I would guess so as well).
Whatever mechanism you are using, there are fields involved, and a field
update is always a change for Word even if the displayed "field result"
is the same. [And, in your case, it isn't.]

You could also forget about fields altogether and use normal text (might
be a little harder to search/replace). But it certainly _is_ a change to
the document no matter how you do it.

2cents
Robert