Inserting the Saved Date In a Header or Footer

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 8, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

There may be times when you want your header or footer to contain the date of the last time that your workbook was saved. Normally, this is not information you can set in Excel. However, you can use the following macro to force the information into the proper place:

Sub MyFooter()
Dim mh As String
On Error Resume Next
mh = ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Last Save Time")
If Err = 440 Then
   Err = 0
   mh = ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date")
   If Err = 440 Then
      Err = 0
      mh = "Not Set"
   End If
End If
mh = Left(mh, 8)
ActiveSheet.PageSetup.LeftFooter = "Saved: " & mh
End Sub

There are a number of items to note in this macro. First of all, it attempts to determine the last date (and time) that the workbook was saved. If that information cannot be determined, then it extracts the date it was created. Finally, if that cannot be found, then it sets the footer to "Not Saved."

Notice that there is some error handling done in this macro. The reason is that Excel will return an error if a particular document property (BuiltinDocumentProperty in this case) is not set. The error needs to be intercepted and handled, which is done here.

You should note that this macro, once run, will set the left footer to the desired information. That information will not change again until you run the macro again. Thus, if you always want an up-to-date date in the footer, then you should either run the macro periodically (perhaps right before printing), or set it up to run whenever you open your document.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the ExcelTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2055) applies to Microsoft Excel 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. ...

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