Stamp Date and Time on Documents
With Sarbanes-Oxley pushing on us, we’d like to add a date and maybe even a time stamp on all our documents. Is there a simple way to do that?
In Word, the fastest and easiest way is to position your cursor where you want the stamp to appear on your document and click on Insert, Date and Time , which produces this screen:
Caution: If you want the date to remain fixed (that is, you dont want it changed to the new date when you open the file next week), do not place a check next to the Update automatically box. And if you want your format selection (9/9/2005 8:57:08 or whichever you choose) to be the default for all future date inserts, click on Default .
To add the date to a header or footer, click on View , Header and Footer , generating this screen:
To switch between the header and footer, click on the third icon from the right (see screenshot below).
To insert the date, click on the icon with little calendar dates; to add the time, click on the clock icon to the right.
You also can add dates and times automatically to every document as its created or to selected documents. To put them on every document, youll need to amend the normal.dot file, which is the template for all new Word files. To find it, go to
C:Documents and Settings [the computers name; in my case, its Stanley] ApplicationDataMicrosoftTemplates.
The file looks like this:
If you cant find it, use Windows Explorers Search tool to locate it (see screenshot below).
Before you tinker with the normal.dot file, be sure to make a copy of it. That way in case you make a mistake you can always return the normal template back to its original format.
To add a date, follow the same instructionsbut place a check in Update automatically and click on OK .
To add a date to an Excel header or footer, click on View , Header and Footer and then select either Custom Header or Custom Footer . Decide where you want the header/footer and click on the appropriate icon (calendar for date, clock for time).
Give it a name (I choose Date.xlt ) and save it as a template ( *.xlt ).
For convenience, make a shortcut to the template and save it on your desktop.
