Forcing the Properties Dialog Box to Appear

Word automatically saves quite a bit of information about your document, and it allows you to specify and save even more. You normally can see the information saved with a document by choosing Properties from the File menu, which displays the Properties dialog box. The various tabs in the dialog box help organize the range of information kept about any particular document.

Word will, if you so direct it, display the Properties dialog box the first time you save a new document. You can control this feature by following these steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Save tab is displayed. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. If you want to force word to display the Properties dialog box when first saving a document, make sure the Prompt for Document Properties check box is selected.
4. Click on OK to close the Options dialog box.

Note that this option is available only in Word 97 through Word 2003. Remember that this configuration of Word only displays the Properties dialog box the first time you save your document. (In this respect, the wording of the Prompt for Document Properties check box is a bit misleading.) If you later want to change properties, you must choose Properties from the File menu to display the dialog box. There is no way to force the Properties dialog box to appear every time you save your document, unless you write a macro that is invoked every time a document is saved.