Need help with Field Codes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rhino
  • Start date Start date
R

Rhino

I'm trying to put a field code into my Word 2002 document but having trouble
getting the syntax just right.

I want the field code to be replaced by the current year plus 1. Therefore,
if the document is being generated today, I want the field code to put 2007
at a specifc place within my document.

I know that the field code {DATE \@ "YYYY"} will give me the current year.

I'm struggling with how to write the field code that will give me the next
year. First of all, I'm not sure whether I can write an expression that adds
1 to year and display that result directly or whether I have to first
transform that result to a character string. Second, I'm not sure how to get
the result even as an integer.

To get an integer result, I'm guessing that I have to use an = formula,
something like this:

{={DATE \@ "YYYY"}+1}

To get a character string result, I'm guessing that I have to imbed all of
that in a QUOTE, something like this:

{QUOTE "{={DATE \@ "YYYY"} +1}/1 \@ "YYYY"}

This last guess was inspired by the Help article on QUOTE.

Unfortunately, I inevitably get a Syntax Error whenever I try to use either
approach, no matter how carefully I try to write the field code. (I'm a
veteran programmer and I know how important it is to get the syntax of a
statement just right.) What's worse is that everytime I get the Syntax
Error, the original field code is destroyed and I have to painstakingly type
it all in again rather than just altering it and trying it again.

Can anyone help me out?
 
No need for a QUOTE field. This works just fine for me (Word 2003) with this
syntax:

{ = { DATE \@ "YYYY" } +1 }

Note the spaces.


--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
There's got to be some kind of a knack that I'm just not getting here.

I tried doing a CTRL-F9 to produce a pair of heavy braces at the right point
in my document. That worked. Then, when I pasted the exact string you
provided in your note, including the spaces, that seemed to work too. But as
soon as I pressed the "Propagate" icon on the Mail Merge toolbar, the spot
where I had entered the field code said !Syntax Error, {.

<VENT>
I've been messing with this seemingly simple task of inputting a formula for
calculating the next year for something like two hours and my head's getting
sore from banging it on the wall. I seem to have tried every variation I can
imagine of DATE, SET, =, and everything else I could think of and it
inevitably gets me a syntax error!! What the heck is going on here?? I've
done a Google search on the newsgroup and seen several variations of your
suggestion supplied by various responders and none of them seem to have any
followup questions, which gives the impression that the original poster had
no problem using this formula in their documents. So why do I alone seem to
have problems with this?? Is there some kind of document wide setting that
has the wrong value or something??
</VENT>

For what it's worth, I've also tried doing Insert/Field, selecting =, then
entering { DATE \@ "YYYY" } +1
in the Formula field, then choosing 0 as the number format. That doesn't
work either. I've tried using lowercase "yyyy" instead of "YYYY". That
didn't help. Everything leads me back to this Syntax Error.

What boneheaded mistake am I making here?

--
Rhino



Suzanne S. Barnhill said:
No need for a QUOTE field. This works just fine for me (Word 2003) with
this
syntax:

{ = { DATE \@ "YYYY" } +1 }

Note the spaces.


--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup
so
all may benefit.
Click to expand...
 
You did not mention a mail merge. Date fields are not compatible with mail
merges.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Rhino said:
There's got to be some kind of a knack that I'm just not getting here.

I tried doing a CTRL-F9 to produce a pair of heavy braces at the right point
in my document. That worked. Then, when I pasted the exact string you
provided in your note, including the spaces, that seemed to work too. But as
soon as I pressed the "Propagate" icon on the Mail Merge toolbar, the spot
where I had entered the field code said !Syntax Error, {.

<VENT>
I've been messing with this seemingly simple task of inputting a formula for
calculating the next year for something like two hours and my head's getting
sore from banging it on the wall. I seem to have tried every variation I can
imagine of DATE, SET, =, and everything else I could think of and it
inevitably gets me a syntax error!! What the heck is going on here?? I've
done a Google search on the newsgroup and seen several variations of your
suggestion supplied by various responders and none of them seem to have any
followup questions, which gives the impression that the original poster had
no problem using this formula in their documents. So why do I alone seem to
have problems with this?? Is there some kind of document wide setting that
has the wrong value or something??
</VENT>

For what it's worth, I've also tried doing Insert/Field, selecting =, then
entering { DATE \@ "YYYY" } +1
in the Formula field, then choosing 0 as the number format. That doesn't
work either. I've tried using lowercase "yyyy" instead of "YYYY". That
didn't help. Everything leads me back to this Syntax Error.

What boneheaded mistake am I making here?
Click to expand...
 
So you're saying that there's no way to put the current year plus 1
(whatever the current year is when I run the mail merge) in each label of a
set of labels? No way at all?? Are you sure?

I find that surprising: Word seems pretty powerful and the task of putting a
date on each label seems pretty trivial. By the way, I can put the current
date on a label easily enough, it's just the result of adding 1 to the
current year that is giving me trouble. Considering that you can calculate
quantities like the current year plus 1 in other places within the document,
why not do the same in a mail merge?

By the way, I was able to get past the Syntax Error problem I reported
earlier. I now have perfectly valid looking code that doesn't give me an
error message:

{ DATE = {={DATE \@ yyyy} + 1}}

However, although the expression seems to be calculating the current year
plus 1, the result of the calculation always seems to be the current year
NOT the current year plus 1. For what it's worth, I have tried umpteen
variations of this formula, some of which used CREATEDATE instead of DATE
and some of which used "yyyy" instead of yyyy, but I always get the current
year, not current year plus 1. I've tried adding numbers much greater than
1 - on the theory that 1 might have been interpreted as 1 millisecond
instead of 1 year in this expression - but even with huge numbers like
99999999999999999, the result of the addition is always the current year.
 
I get the current year plus 1 with the field I suggested--no problems. If
the date field is updated and correct in your mail merge main document
before you merge the labels, then it should probably be okay on the labels.
What I was (incorrectly) remembering is that a CREATEDATE field in the
header of a mail merge main document is converted to plain text (rather than
a CREATEDATE field) in the merged document, and so the date is always the
same in the resulting document.

But if you use a DATE field (as you are doing) and update it in the mail
merge main document before merging, it should work fine. Interestingly, when
I tried this the field was preserved in the merged document; I don't know
whether this is because it's a DATE field rather than a CREATEDATE field or
because it's a formula field.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
I'm not sure what Suzanne is thinking of here, but date and calculation
fields do work in mail merge.

You need CTRL+F9 for *each pair* of curly brackets and you need to end up
with the following

{ ={ DATE \@ "yyyy" } +1 } which currently will give you 2007. Press F9 to
update the field.

For more complex date calculations, see
http://www.gmayor.com/insert_a_date_other_than_today.htm and for formatting,
see http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
 
Graham Mayor said:
I'm not sure what Suzanne is thinking of here, but date and calculation
fields do work in mail merge.

You need CTRL+F9 for *each pair* of curly brackets and you need to end up
with the following

{ ={ DATE \@ "yyyy" } +1 } which currently will give you 2007. Press F9 to
update the field.
Click to expand...
Okay, now I'm officially baffled. :-)

I tried your suggestion just now and it worked perfectly. I even tried
changing the date on my computer, closed and reopened the document and found
that the current year and the current year plus 1 were exactly as I wanted
them to be.

The reason I'm baffled is that I tried the same formula - and umpteen
variations - yesterday and none of them worked correctly: they either gave
me an error of some kind or they inevitably showed the current year, not the
current year plus 1. I was getting REALLY frustrated by that experience and
now everything works just as cleanly and simply as I had expected when I
started playing with this formula. I'm completely at a loss to understand
why none of this was working yesterday despite several hours of
experimentation and now works perfectly today.

Do you or Suzanne have any idea what the problem might have been yesterday?
I have to believe that there is a rational explanation for this so I find
myself wondering what it is.

My guess is that the technique I used for entering the formula was flawed in
some way. I tried entering the formula in several different ways yesterday:
1. I cut and pasted the formula, except for the outermost braces, directly
into my document, specifically in the top left hand label. Then I selected
the formula and hit CTRL-F9.
2. I positioned the insert point at the appropriate spot in the document,
hit CTRL-F9, typed the = sign, hit CTRL-F9 again, typed the DATE \@ "yyyy"
portion of the formula, moved my cursor past the inner closing brace, then
typed +1 between the two closing braces.
3. I positioned the insert point at the appropriate spot in the document,
clicked Insert/Field, selected = Formula, entered {DATE \@ "yyyy"}+1 in the
formula field, clicked OK.

Should all of these techniques work in Word 2002?

Today, I used the second approach and it worked perfectly, as I said. But
I'm sure I did the same thing, probably several times, yesterday and it did
NOT work then.
For more complex date calculations, see
http://www.gmayor.com/insert_a_date_other_than_today.htm and for
formatting, see http://www.gmayor.com/formatting_word_fields.htm
Click to expand...
I had a look at your links and found that the first one refers to the
Macropod article on advanced date handling. I found that yesterday via
Google newsgroups and downloaded his demonstration document. I was using it
to compute the next year but his formulas weren't working for me either,
despite typing them meticulously. Now that I appear to be out of the
Twilight Zone, I may give those another try, just to verify that they work
as Macropod describes.

The formallting article was also interesting and I may use some of those
techniques in future documents, just as I used another of your articles to
learn how to do mail merges earlier in the week.

You've done a great job with your website! Thank you for taking the time to
share your knowledge with those of us who are new to Word and still
struggling a bit with some aspects of the product!
 
You probably didn't update the field after making changes.
Don't even think of typing Macropod's fields. Download the document that
contains them and copy the code to your document, then edit it to do what
you want.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
 
I've already backed off somewhat, but do try a CreateDate field, Graham,
before you assert that "date" fields work in mail merges. If you can find a
way to get that to work, I'd be grateful. Here's what I get:

1. CreateDate in mail merge main document shows creation date of said
document.

2. Merged document shows CreateDate of mail merge main document as plain
text (not a field).

If I use a Date field instead, then the field is preserved in the merged
output, but that's not what I want, though it's a step forward, since it's
easier to Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink the field than to type the date in
manually. The document in question is a list of phone numbers for the
members of my Rotary club; I create a new list whenever the membership
changes, so I want it to show the revision date. I guess maybe the SaveDate
is what I need to shoot for (now that I know there is a possibility of
getting some kind of date field to work).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Rhino said:
Okay, now I'm officially baffled. :-) ....
I tried your suggestion just now and it worked perfectly. ....
The reason I'm baffled is that I tried the same formula - and umpteen
variations - yesterday and none of them worked correctly ....
I'm completely at a loss to understand
why none of this was working yesterday despite several hours of
experimentation and now works perfectly today.
Click to expand...

My 2 cents worth: Apologies everyone for snipping this; the thread was
becoming unmanageable, and my comments do not really require the whole
context.

This problem of something working now that didn't work yesterday
'despite being keyed in exactly the same' is common. IMHO, you did not
key it in exactly the same. You probably made some subtle (or even
outrageous) mistake and read over it because we all see what we expect
to see. I've had the same experience countless times. My mosdt common
one was back in the DOS/Quickbasic programming days, when I got
continual errors which semed to go back each time to the darned machine
(it's always the machine - never the user) not recognising the perfectly
valid STRINGS keyword. When I came back to the problem the next day, I
would invariable immediately spot that it should be STRING$. So when
faced with something that doen't work, I often come back with a fresh
mind the next morning, have few glasses of wine, and solve it
immediately! (Only kidding about the few glasses of wine; that was last
night...)
 
I'm not really sure where you are going with this. The only way that it
would matter if CREATEDATE was converted to plain text during the merge
(which it is) would be if you wanted to reprint the merged document at a
later date - when it is just as simple to remerge.

Take the following example:
from the merge document

{ CREATEDATE \@ "d MMM yyyy" } ... { ={ CREATEDATE \@ "yyyy"} + 1 }
{ DATE \@ "d MMM yyyy" } ... { ={ DATE \@ "yyyy" } + 1 }
{ MERGEFIELD MergeDate \@ "d MMM yyyy" } ... { ={ MERGEFIELD MergeDate \@
"yyyy" } +1 }

In the merged document

18 Jun 2006 ... { =2006 + 1 }
{ DATE \@ "d MMM yyyy" } ... { ={ DATE \@ "yyyy" } + 1 }
30 Jun 2006 ... { =2006 +1 }

Which prints as

18 Jun 2006 ... 2007
18 Jun 2006 ... 2007
30 Jun 2006 ... 2007

Re-reading your post, it seems to be that Createdate will do what you want.
It produces the date that the *merged* document was created and doesn't
update so there's no need for you to unlink it? Or have I missed something
along the way? ;)

I never merge directly to the printer.


--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
 
All of the braces, including the internal ones, need to be inserted by Word,
not by typing. You cannot do a field like this using Insert > Field.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
Have you actually tried this? I do not get the CreateDate of the merged
document. I get the CreateDate of the mail merge main document, as plain
text. This is not the creation date of the merged document, so it does me no
good. The field is in the document header; perhaps that makes a difference?
It (and all the rest of the "heading" text) has to be in the header because
this is a catalog/directory merge.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Save the mailmerge main document as a template and use File>New to create a
new mail merge main document when you need one.

--
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
 
That would work.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP said:
Save the mailmerge main document as a template and use File>New to create a
new mail merge main document when you need one.

--
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
Click to expand...
 
I see your point - which was not revealed using a new merge document as the
createdate is today, but Doug has it covered ;)

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
 
Back
Top