Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. 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 the Date and Time.
Undoubtedly, the time will arise when you need to insert the current date or time in your document. This may be in the introduction of a letter or in a header or footer. Word allows you to quickly insert the date or time in several different formats. This information is inserted as a field which can be updated manually or is updated automatically when you print the document.
To insert the date or time into your document, follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Date and Time dialog box.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10513) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Inserting the Date and Time.
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2020-12-16 23:25:04
ddm
Excel has a convenient cntl-; shortcut to insert the current date. Does Word have an equivalent or do I need to create a macro?
2017-11-07 15:04:57
Theodore J. Duke
Windows 10: For frequent, easy insertion of Date (and optionally Time etc.) use the Insert Tab's Text group. There you will see "Date & Time" at the near far right, second item from the top. For my non-complex but frequent use, I dragged that icon to the Quick Access toolbar at the upper left of the window (which I had previously moved to just below the ribbon and right above the word "Navigation."). One click on its calendar icon there brings up the dialog box of format options for inserting date & time. Another click inserts it at the cursor's position.
2017-11-06 09:44:29
Andrew
Peter Lindner: Your macros are in your old copy of normal.dotm, your new installation overwrote this. As for your date issue, you might want to try fiddling with the Windows settings (Control Panel - Region and Language) in which there are some ways to set the format. I think Word gives the default Windows setting as one of the date format options.
2017-11-03 09:52:25
Peter Lindner
Gee, I'd like the format as Fri, Nov 3, 2017 9:40am
Is a macro the only way to go?
And, when I upgraded from Outlook 2010 to MS Office 2016, I lost all my macros. So, is there a non-macro way, and can I recover my old macros?
2015-03-29 19:20:53
Phil Reinemann
In my footer I often put the field for the last saved date. I'd prefer this to be easier than navigating through the list of field to get to the format I want so I really should create a macro in my template to do this, but just haven't gotten to it.
(Personally, I prefer a date format of YYYYMMDD HH:MM in 24 hour format. Stardate... ;-))
2015-03-28 10:29:20
Mike Brown
As a tech writer, our documents require I date the changes I make, which is always today's date in the mm/dd/yyyy format.
I recorded the following macro and attached it to a button in the toolbar so that I can simply click it and today's date is entered as text. (Search the web for specifying other date formats.) There are probably better ways to do this but this works for me.
Sub Date_short()
'
' Date_short Macro
'
'
Selection.Fields.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Type:=wdFieldEmpty, Text:= _
"DATE @ ""MM/dd/yyyy"" ", PreserveFormatting:=True
Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
Selection.Fields.Unlink
Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End Sub
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. 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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