[John]

My office is using Office 2000 (Word) on XP Pro. I have created many, many
form files/documents that "merge" with Excel via DDE to a finished/new
document that is saved to various other folders under a new file name.

The form files and excel database are located on our server for every user
to access. I originally inserted a date field (via the insert menu) into
each new form file I created. However, that causes a problem at the saving
end of the newly created document. We need the document to maintain its date
at creation and not have the date updated automatically upon reopening the
file a month later.

I removed the inserted date field from each form file manually (one at a
time) and now the process is that each user opening the form file has to type
in the correct month, day, and periodically year. That would be reasonable
except that the form files are "read only" for everyone but the
administrator. So if you open the same file several times in the same day,
you have to retype the correct date each time you open it. Frustrating for
those that are under the "read only" choice.

Is there a way to either globally change the date on all of the form files
without causing the DDE link to drop with the database? It would be great if
there were an auto date update that once the "new" document was created and
saved would not auto update with each new opening of that "new" document that
was saved.

Can anyone point me in the direction to deal with this problem. We have
hundreds of form files. I do not want to manually change the month on each
file individually with each new month of the year.

Thank you,
--
John R.