I have an invoice created in Excel 2000 that automatically fills in today's date when I create the invoice. However, everytime I open that invoice at some future date, for example to record payment, the date changes to the current date. Is there a way to lock the original date, say after printing so that the original date of the invoice is always displayed? Or do I need to simply change the cell so that I have to manually enter the date?

I have to manually enter the date? This would seem to be the only option I can think of. Using CTRL + ; (semicolon mark) should be easy enough. There is probably a VBA solution. But I don't have the skills yet to create one for you. MIKE http://www.skeptic.com/

Sometimes your brain just does not want to function...... Just do a test to see if a cell is blank using =ISBLANK(), if it is, add todays date, if it is not, punt. It has to be a cell that you know will be filled on every invoice. If you auto generate the Invoice number that would probably work. MIKE http://www.skeptic.com/

Forget It, that's not going to work either. Just tried it. VBA would seem you only hope. MIKE http://www.skeptic.com/

re: Is there a way to lock the original date, say after printing so that the original date of the invoice is always displayed? What if you don't print the invoice on the same day it is created? The reason I ask is that you can force Excel to run a Macro immediately before the sheet is printed so you could lock in the date that way. However, if you created the invoice on the 1st but didn't print it, and then opened in on the 8th and printed it, a Before_Print macro would lock in the 8th. You can also lock in the date before you save it, or as soon as you open it or as soon as you make a change to any other cell or even select another cell or...or...or... Tell us when it's the best time(s?) to lock in the date and we'll see what we can offer.