Word 2003: Easy Updating of footer fields

An annoying feature of Microsoft Word is it's failure to allow control of updates to fields within footers when saving files.

The easiest way that I have found is to change the Save button behaviour.....

• On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Macros.
• In the Macros in list, click the template or document in which you want to store the macro
  I suggest the normal.dot so that it is available in all your documents
• In the Macro name box, type FileSave as the name for the macro so that it replaces the action of the FileSave Button on your toolbar.
• Click Create to open the Visual Basic Editor
• Copy and paste so that the macro looks like the following code:

Sub FileSave()
If ActiveWindow.View.SplitSpecial = wdPaneNone Then
ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Type = wdNormalView
Else
ActiveWindow.View.Type = wdNormalView
End If
Selection.WholeStory
Selection.Fields.Update
If ActiveWindow.View.SplitSpecial = wdPaneNone Then
ActiveWindow.ActivePane.View.Type = wdPrintView
Else
ActiveWindow.View.Type = wdPrintView
End If
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Documents.Save NoPrompt:=True, _
OriginalFormat:=wdOriginalDocumentFormat
End Sub

• Close the Visual Basic Editor
• Close Word 2003

(Above instructions based on Microsoft Online Guides - Create Macro and Edit Macros)

How it works:

• Open a document, Save As a different name
• After saving the first time, just click the Save button and the footers in both the saved version and the onscreen view will be updated.