Forcing the Properties Dialog Box to Appear

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 18, 2019)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

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:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the Save tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Save tab of the Options dialog box.

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.
Click on OK to close the Options dialog box.

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.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1819) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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