Document Properties / Advanced Properties / Custom tab - uses?

Question

1. Open a document.

Office Button

Prepare

Properties

The Document Information Panel opens

2. In the Document Information Panel towards the top left hand corner there is a drop down field called:-

Document Properties

I click on the drop down arrow then click on:-

Advance Properties . . .

A new window opens.

3. In that new window there is a tab called:-

Custom

What are the settings in this Custom tab used for?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Answer 1

Word comes with a series of predefined properties such as Checked By, Client etc., and you can create your own properties.

You can use these to store information about the document that doesn't fit in the properties provided in the Summary tab of the Document Properties dialog.

You can refer to the value of a property anywhere in your document by inserting a DOCPROPERTY field.

For example, let's say you create documents for a company with several departments. You can enter the name of the relevant department in the Department property, then press Enter or click Modify.

To insert the name of the department into the document, press Ctrl+F9 to insert field brackets (or use your custom button).

Type   DOCPROPERTY "Department"   between the brackets, then press F9 to hide the field code and to update the result.

To change the department throughout the document, you only need to modify the value of Department in the Custom tab of the Document Properties dialog, then update all fields in the document (for example by print previewing it).

If you need a property that hasn't been predefined, you can create it yourself:

Type a name in the Name box, e.g.  Report Year.

Select a type (Text, Date, Number or Yes/No) from the Type dropdown, e.g. Number.

Enter a value in the Value box, e.g. 2013.

Click Add.

The property has been added to this document, and it will be saved with the document. You can use it in a DOCPROPERTY field just like the predefined properties.

Document properties can be retrieved and set in VBA through the BuiltinDocumentProperties and CustomDocumentProperties collections of the Document object:

MsgBox ActiveDocument.CustomDocumentProperties("Report Year").Value