How do I make it mandatory to fill out file properties?

[ITaliasfan]

I'm using sharepoint portal for a document database and search engine at the
company I work for.

In order for Advanced search options to work, we are using a template in
word for when creating documents. People always forget to fill out their
name (Author) and Title. How can I get the template to prompt them to do
this & make it mandatory?

Thank you

ITaliasfan

 

[Jay Freedman]

In the Tools > Options > Save dialog, you can check the option "Prompt for
document properties" to make Word show the Properties dialog the first time
the document is saved (or saved to another file with Save As). But it will
let the user cancel the dialog without entering anything...

The Author field should always contain the name that's shown in the Tools >
Options > User Information dialog at the time of the first save, if that
dialog contains anything. Similarly, Word tries to fill in the Title field
with the first line of the document. Again, not a big help...

The only way to make these entries mandatory is to place a macro in the
template to intercept the SaveAs command
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/InterceptSavePrint.htm). The macro can
examine the content of the fields
(ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties("Author").Value and
ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties("Title").Value. If the contents are
empty, the macro displays the Properties dialog. When the user closes that
dialog, the macro again examines the contents, and if they're empty it
redisplays the dialog. This continues until the user either fills in the
fields -- allowing the macro to save the document -- or submits a
resignation.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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