Delayed Dates

The Delayed Date macro enables you to put a field in a Word document that shows a date up to 28 days later or earlier than a normal Word date field would show. This is invaluable for people creating a document, such as an invoice or a questionnaire, that aims to get a response from a recipient a certain number of days after the document was sent or created. For example, if you were to put a Delayed Date field in a template based on Word's "Create Date" field, each new document based on that template would show a date which was the specified number of days after the date that the document was generated from the template.

The Delayed Date macro is held in a Word 6/7 template DELAYDAT.DOT but imports flawlessly into Word 97/2000/2002. The template contains an AutoOpen macro which gives you the chance, when the template is opened, to move the Delayed Date macro and a one-button toolbar to your Normal.Dot. Alternatively, you can place the template in your Word Startup folder (see Tools|Options|File Locations) so it will always be available. Be sure to open the template once in order to read and perhaps print the guidance text in it.

The Delayed Date macro is only required by the person inserting the field in the document in the first place. Thereafter the field code makes the necessary calculation of the date, so people using, say, a letter template containing a Delayed Date field, or reading the final document, do not need to have the macro on their machine. Indeed, a field once generated can be cut and pasted within, and between, documents.

When the Delayed Date macro is run, it displays a dialog allowing the user to choose between the various kinds of date field (the current date, Create Date, Print Date or Saved Date), to decide the number of days delay, and the date format. The field code generated (press Alt-F9 to toggle to and from field results view) runs to about 7 lines of text. To help true connoisseurs of Word field arithmetic (of which there are many!) there is even an option to apply colours which help you to relate the parts of the date to the parts of the field code. Different colours are used depending on whether a month-end or a year-end intervenes during the delay period.

The Delayed Date macro works in all the languages supported by the version of Word installed on your machine, and also supports the various list/decimal separators recognized in Windows.

Version 3.0 is comprehensively revamped and works fully with all versions of Word from Word 6 to Word 2002. Problems with separators have been resolved, and any separator that can be entered in the dialog can be used. It now also includes an "Advanced date" option creating dates up to 28 days before the current date.