Generating a List of Dates

For some documents, it is helpful to have a list of dates that you can use as the basis for your work. For instance, you may have to create a report that lists all the dates between now and the end of the year, along with a person's name or a project name to the right of the date. The starting point, of course, is getting the list of dates.

There are a couple of ways you can approach generating the list. One easy method is to use Excel in conjunction with Word. Excel's AutoFill feature makes generating a list of dates amazingly easy. Once you have the list in Excel, you can then copy and paste it into the Word document, or you can use mail merge to merge the dates into the document (if that approach is appropriate for your needs).

If you prefer to not use Excel for some reason, the best solution is to use a macro. The following macro very quickly creates a list of all the dates for the year 2015:

Sub PrintYearDays()
    Dim DateToday As Date
    Dim T As Integer

    'Because the date is going to be changed, save it
    DateToday = Date
    Date = #12/31/2014#

    For T = 1 To 365
        Selection.TypeText Text:=Format(Date + T, _
          "mmmm dd yyyy")
        Selection.TypeParagraph
    Next T

    'Restore today's date
    Date = DateToday
End Sub

Notice that the macro works by resetting the date on your system. Today's current date is stored in the DateToday variable, and then the date is reset to the starting date for your range. If you want to have the macro work for some other date range, just change the starting date, along with the ending value of the For ... Next loop.

If you need to create date lists, and you never quite know what the beginning and ending dates in the range will be, then a different macro approach makes more sense. The following macro asks you for both a beginning and ending date:

Sub ListDates()
    Dim ListDate as Date
    Dim StartDate As Date
    Dim EndDate As Date
    Dim Repeats As Integer

    'Gets user input
    StartDate = InputBox("Please enter the starting date.", _
      "Start Date", "Start Date")
    EndDate = InputBox("Please enter the ending date.", _
      "End Date", "End Date")

    'Enters the start date in the document
    Selection.TypeText Text:=Format(StartDate, _
      "dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy")
    Selection.TypeText (vbCr & vbLf)

    'Determines the number of dates to print
    Repeats = DateDiff("d", StartDate, EndDate)

    'Loops to print the list of dates
    For i = 1 To Repeats
        ListDate = DateAdd("d", i, StartDate)
        Selection.TypeText Text:=Format(ListDate, _
          "dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy")
        Selection.TypeParagraph
    Next i
End Sub

The StartDate and EndDate variables, set by your input, determines how many times the For ... Next loop is repeated.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3864) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Generating a List of Dates.