The many ways to use the new Date field options in Writer!

With the all-new date field options, you can forget about manually calculating your past, present and future dates and leave it all to Writer to automatically calculate it for you.

1. To insert today's date:

If you're writing a letter, you'll likely want to include the current date to show the day it was sent. However, since you could be drafting the letter today but sending it a week later, it's important that your date field updates automatically to the current date.  To do this go to Fields > Date > Dynamic Today's Date. 

2. To display a future or past date:

Future date

Say you're drafting a payment reminder letter to let your subscribers know that the payment deadline has been extended 25 days from the original due date. Instead of calculating the extended due date manually, you can simply input +25 and Writer will automatically input the date into your letter.

To do this, go to Create Custom Date Field. In the Preset date value field, enter your original due date (let's say it's 06/29/2021). Now to convert this due date to the extended date, all you have to do is add 25 days in the (+)Add days option below. Writer will then automatically calculate this date for you.

Past date
Similarly, if you wanted to include a past date from your original due date, you can just enter the days you want to subtract from your original due date. To do this, go to Create Custom Date Field. In the Preset date value field, enter your original due date (we'll use 06/29/2021 again).

Now to convert this due date to the past date, all you have to do is enter the number of days or month(s) you want in the (-)Subtract days option below. In this case say it's 25 days. Writer will then automatically calculate this date for you.

3. To create a named date field and reuse it throughout the document:

Now let's say you want to use the extended date field from example 1 in multiple places in a document, so that if you changed the settings for one of these extended date fields it would affect all the other fields as well.

To do this, go to Create Custom Date Field and create the extended date field like how it's shown in example 1. After you've created the field, go to Date >  Custom Autofields > Extended due date and place the fields wherever necessary in the document. Now if you were to change the settings for one of these fields (if perhaps you want to change the extended date field from 25 to 30 days), then this change would be reflected in every other field in the document as well. 

4 (a). To add business dates during document merge:

Payment due dates, submission deadlines, and meeting dates often take place on business days and exclude weekends. To calculate only business dates during document merge, click the settings icon next to Manage Fields and click Configure next to the Date merge field. Now add or subtract the number of days you want, then check the Exclude option and select Weekends.

4 (b). To add business dates for new merge date fields:
If you wanted to create a new merge date field (like an extended date field which is 25 days from your original date) that excludes weekends, go to Create Field.

Now, add the name of the field and choose the format as Date. Click Configure under the Value option.

Select the field value as your original date (as your extended date will be 25 days after). Now enter 25 in the (+) Add days option, then check the Exclude option and select Weekends.

4 (c). To add business dates for particular date fields: 

To add business dates for particular date fields, click on the date field in the template you want to change and the choose the Change for this instance alone option.

Select the Configure option and add or subtract the days you want, then check the Exclude option and select Weekends. 

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Like the update? Let us know what you think of this feature in the comments below, and follow us on Twitter to catch all the latest Writer news first.

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