Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Inserting Summary Information.
Word keeps track of summary information for a document. You can either use this summary information, or you can ignore it. Some of the summary information is automatically created for you while other parts need to be entered manually. One of the pieces of information maintained is the author of a document. This is originally set to be the Word user name, but you can change the author name at any time. Word allows you to insert summary information such as the author's name directly in your document, and have it updated automatically if you should ever change the information. This is done by following these steps:
Figure 1. The Field dialog box.
There are many different bits of summary information you may want to include in your document. Here are a few:
| Field Name | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Name of the document's author | |
| CreateDate | Date the document was created | |
| FileName | Document's name and location on disk | |
| FileSize | Size of the document's disk file | |
| LastSavedBy | Word user name of the last person to save the file | |
| NumChars | Total number of characters in the document | |
| NumPages | Total number of pages in the document | |
| SaveDate | Date the document was last saved | |
| Subject | Subject of the document | |
| Template | Name of the document's template | |
| Title | Document's title |
You should note that not all of these fields can be inserted by selecting the Document Information category (step 4). For instance, CreateDate and SaveDate are inserted, instead, by first selecting the Date and Time category.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8799) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Inserting Summary Information.
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2018-05-24 05:17:13
Ron MVP
Allen: you should update this article to explicitly state that the feature has been removed in Word 2016.
Normally features stay in the product, so the old update date is not relevant. But in this case the feature is gone and the article needs to be updated to reflect that.
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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