There are differences in the way Word 2003 and Word 2007 handle custom Document Properties, which can cause problems when you want to display Unique Document IDs in the footers of your Word documents. These issues are further complicated by the way Word 2007 lets you save a DOC as a 'DOCX in Compatibility Mode'.
Consider this situation:
- You have a SharePoint document library that contains a document that was originally created in Word 2003 (a DOC file).
- That document library contains a custom metadata column called 'Doc ID' (which records a unique document number that has been assigned when the document was first loaded to SharePoint.
- You open the DOC file from SharePoint into Word 2007.
- SharePoint automatically transcribes the value of the 'Doc ID' metadata column to a custom document property – also called 'Doc ID' .
- The DOC contains a Filed code in its footer, which displays the value of the 'Doc ID' property.
- All works well until to save the document as a 'DOCX in Compatibility mode'.
- It's a new document (with a different extension and maybe a different name) so it should be assigned a new Doc ID.
- Trouble is – the Field code continues to display the old Doc ID value
This problem can occur when displaying the value of any SharePoint metadata column, and is especially serious when that metadata is a unique Document Number or Document ID, such as created by MacroView Unique Document Numbering.
In DOCX documents, the values of custom document properties are held in XML format in a 'Custom Control'.
To display one of these '2007-style' document properties you need to use Quick Part, Document Property on the Insert ribbon.
An existing Field codes in a DOCX in Compatibility Mode will continue to display a '2003-style' document property, whose value is frozen at the point where a document is saved as a DOCX.
The safe approach is to save DOCs into true DOCX format (i.e. not Compatibility Mode) and convert any existing Field codes that are displaying document properties into the corresponding Quick Parts.
If you do not remove / replace the old Field codes then a situation can arise where a document displays both the new 2007-style Doc ID property (which will have the correct new value) and the 2003-style Doc ID property (which will be out-of-date).
MacroView can supply Word macros that automate this conversion process for you.