Word 2016 For Professionals For Dummies
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Date-and-time fields in Word 2016 are something you can easily code manually. Is doing so quicker than using commands on the Ribbon? You bet! Especially when you know the codes you want and can easily craft the field.

To build a field manually, press Ctrl+F9. Word presents an empty field: { }

Between the brackets, you can manually type any field, if you know the field name. For the date field, the name is DATE. For the time field, the name is TIME. Use the DATE field if you plan to mix date-and-time values.

The field name is followed by one or more optional switches. The most common switch is \@, which is followed by a date/time picture string enclosed in double quotes. The characters you can use in the string are listed in the following table.

Word's Date-and-Time Field Codes

Code What It Stands For
am/pm Suffix AM or PM after the current time
d Day of the month
dd Day of the month, two digits wide
ddd Day of the week, three letters only
dddd Day name
h Hour, one digit wide, 12-hour format
H Hour, one digit wide, 24-hour format
hh Hour, two digits wide
HH Hour, two digits wide
m Minutes
mm Minutes, two digits wide
M Month number
MMM Month name, three letters only
MMMM Month, full name
s Seconds
ss Seconds, two digits wide
yy Current year as two digits
yyyy Current year as four digits
For example, to display the day of the week followed by the hour in 24-hour format, create the following DATE field:

{ DATE \@ "ddd HH" \* MERGEFORMAT } The \* MERGEFORMAT text ensures that any formatting applied around the field is also applied to the field.

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Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for over 150 titles years. He's written more than 130 books, including the original For Dummies book, DOS For Dummies, which soon became the world's fastest-selling computer book. Other top sellers include PCs For Dummies, Laptops For Dummies, and Android Phones For Dummies. Visit Dan at www.wambooli.com.

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