If you are creating faxes, letters, or other dated documents from a project template, you can further reduce the amount of manual work you need to do each time you create the document, by inserting the date and/or time in the template as an automatically updating field. You can choose from a variety of formats with more or less detail.
After you specify the format you want to use, Word retrieves the date or time from your computer’s internal calendar or clock.
You can use the same process to insert the current date or time as static text in a document, if you don’t want the information to change.
To insert the current date or time into a Word document:
On the Insert menu, click Date and Time.
In the Date and Time dialog box, under Available formats, click the date and/or time format you want.
To insert the date or time as a field rather than as static text, select the Update automatically check box.
Click OK.
If you selected Update Automatically, Word inserts the current information as a field. When you click information that is stored in a field, gray highlighting appears, to indicate the extent of the field.
To display the codes that control the information displayed in a field:
From the Field dialog box, which you display by clicking Field on the Insert menu, you can insert information other than the date and time as fields. For example, you can insert a field displaying a document property, such as the author, the file name, or the number of characters, words, or pages. You can also insert a limited number of mathematical formulas, and imbue text or graphics with functionality such as printing a document or moving between pages—for example, if you want to display a functioning Print or Go To Page button. For some fields, you can set options that Word will apply to the information displayed in the field.
Information that you insert from the Field dialog box is always set to update automatically, so you don’t need to specify that option. The field updates automatically each time you open the document, or you can update it manually.
To manually update information in a field: