How to insert the Current date in a mailmerge - and retain it

[Frans]

We produce an HR system and our clients use it, amongst other things, to mail
merge standard letters and contracts to employees.
Very often, you want the mail-merged letter to have the current date in it -
say for a contract date or just the date on a letter. The merged document is
often saved somewhere and when you retrieve the document later, you want the
date to still be the date when you actually created and sent the letter - not
today's date.

It sounds like a very simple thing to achieve - but I can't find a simple
way to do it.

If I insert a standard Word "date" field in the mailmerge template then that
remains a field in the merged document, so it refreshes and shows today's
date when I do the mailmerge. However, if I save the mail-merged document and
opens it again another day, it will show whatever date I am opening the
document on. That is how it is supposed to work, I understand.

So, CreateDate or SaveDate to the rescue... But no, because those fields in
the mailmerge template are converted to plain text in the mailmerged document
and retains the CreateDate/SaveDate that was valid for the template - not the
dates that are true for the mail-merged document.

In summary: When mail-merging, I want to insert the date I am doing the
mail-merge on and then fix that date in the resulting document so I can refer
to it later.

Any advice would be gratefully received. Note that my end-users are non-IT
literate, so the options to convert fields to text post-merge or even running
macros are not good. I suspect the answer may lie in a mail-merge formula of
sorts, but I am not sure on how to write those.

Thanks,
Frans

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

You should insert a create date field in the mail merge main document and
save it as a template. Then when you execute the merge, the documents that
are created will have the date upon which the merge was executed.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Frans]

Hi,

Good tip, thanks.
Alas, the behaviour of the app is pretty fixed in this area so I can't
change it to use .dot rather than .doc for the amil merge main document.
Basically, it is a VB app that is remoting Word to create the mail merge
main documents and to execute the mail merge.

So, any way of making this work without the mail merge main doc being a
template?

Thanks,
Frans

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Without know all the details of the process, it could be possible to:

1. Have the VB code insert the date
2. Unlink the Date field before executing the merge by selecting it and
then use Ctrl+Shift+F9 or after executing the merge to a new document by
using Ctrl+A then Ctrl+Shift+F9

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP