Dave, help! I need to submit an essay to my teacher that I actually wrote about a year ago, but don’t want the creation date to be 2023. Is there any way in Microsoft Word for Mac that allows updating the creation date and time? Thanks!
Sophisticated document creation tools like Microsoft Word squirrel away quite a bit of information that you cannot see but that can be unearthed with some investigation. Many include versions and even embed earlier content that has seemingly been deleted, but Word always stores the creation date of a document, the original name of the document, and the creator. Even if a half-dozen people edit the document, that original information will follow along, like an eager puppy.
Generally speaking, it’s easy to get rid of all this cruft if you want to “start fresh”, but since that document will then have your name, your original title for the document, and the current creation date and time, it’s good to understand what’s going on. This helps avoid awkward problems, like a “new” document that’s actually a few years old, or a document with someone else’s name listed as the creator. Let’s check it out…
MICROSOFT WORD FOR MAC “PROPERTIES”
To demonstrate how this all works, here’s a document I’ve been working on to help promote my neighborhood’s block party. I have chosen File > Properties to bring up this additional window:
You can see that this particular document was actually created on July 18 of 2023, almost a year ago. If a new document is built atop an older one, this is what can easily end up shown, but if someone’s not expecting that, it can also be quite confusing and suggest that it’s an older file than is being represented.
Who created it? You can find that listed in the “Summary” tab. Check out what’s tracked on the “Statistics” tab too:
Did you know that Word tracks how much time you’ve spent editing? If you have someone helping you with your writing and they make edits and save them to send you an updated copy their name might well be listed as “Last saved by” too.
CHANGING YOUR NAME IN WORD
As the Summary tab makes clear, Word (and, by extension, Excel, PowerPoint, etc) are saving quite a bit of information. Much of it is personal. Where can you find it? Go into Word > Preferences to reveal this window:
Hopefully you’ve been in this area of the program before, setting up preferences to match your own needs and style. This time, click on “User Information” on the lower left.
Notice that there’s a lot of information you can add here, but what it doesn’t make clear is that this information is automatically included as part of every document you create. Probably not a great place to have your home address and personal cellphone number, for sure.
FINALLY, UPDATING CREATION DATE
With all that explored, let’s get to your actual question: How do you make today the creation date? The answer is: Use “Save As…” and give the document a new name. As part of a save, Word automatically strips out what information it can, including original creator and creation date. If you really want to ensure that there are no revisions saved, you can also save the document in a more basic, rudimentary file format like Rich Text Format (RTF):
Open up the saved RTF format file and go back to the File > Properties window and notice that the Created and Modified dates are now the same:
Even if you save it as a DOCX file, the default for Word, you’ll find that the new document has different information:
Between these various tools and techniques, you should be able to get your own Word document to reflect what you desire. Good luck!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about the Microsoft Office tools for quite a while. You’ll find them in my Computer Basics Help area, cross-listed in Mac or Windows help too, depending on your platform.
Why not just open the old document, press CTRL-A then CTRL-C. Next create a new empty document and click within the body area then press CTRL-V. Doesn’t this achieve what is being discussed here?
Yes, that’s another solution, Dave, but in my experience, it doesn’t always get the formatting correct, so I tend not to do the copy/paste into a new doc solution. Plus it’s helpful to know what information will be then automatically included as the metadata in the new doc too.