Select File > Info.

On the right hand side, click Properties > Advanced Properties.

Activate the Custom tab.

Type a name, select a type, and enter a value if desired, then click Add.

I tried but doesnt show on document property list

can you try?

Hi,

Based on my research, this should be done with Microsoft Office InfoPath.

The properties that appear in the Document Information Panel can't be changed unless you add custom properties by using a property management server or a Microsoft Office InfoPath form. You can add some custom properties by clicking Advanced Properties in the upper left of the Document Information Panel, but the properties will not appear in the Document Information Panel or in the document itself.

1. Click the File ->Info-> Properties->Show Document Panel

The Document Information Panel opens above your document.

1. Fill out the property information that you want to keep with your document.

Notes :

• The Required field flag appears only with properties that are bound to documents that are stored on property management servers. Built-in properties are never required for a document.
• You can add custom properties to the Document Information Panel if you are using a property management server, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Office InfoPath.

Heres the link to refer:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/add-property-information-to-a-document-HA010163766.aspx

The link is for Word 2007. I have changed the steps in the above information for Word 2010.

The following link is about Design a Document Information Panel by using InfoPath, but it is also applies to InfoPath 2007, you can refer:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/infopath-help/design-a-document-information-panel-by-using-infopath-HA010201967.aspx

Hi Jaynet,

Many of us have been creating & referencing custom document properties since way before InfoPath existed. There is no need to use InfoPath to do s

Hi paul,

Not working

• Edited by MGerio Wednesday, August 01, 2012 7:13 AM

Hi paul,

Not working

• Edited by MGerio Wednesday, August 01, 2012 7:13 AM

Your 'Error! Unknown document property name' message suggests you have mis-typed the property name, or you're using it in a document that doesn't have the 'test' document property.

The bookmark error messages suggest you're trying to reference an non-existent bookmark - document properties are not bookmarks.

Your DOCPROPERTY field should look like what I posted:

{DOCPROPERTY test}

Simply having { test } creates nothing more than a bookmark reference. That ain't gonna fly...

Because it's a custom property, all you'll see in the document after updating is the field's value:

test

Create a custom document property:

To insert a DOCPROPERTY field, either use Insert > Quick Parts > Field..., or use Ctrl+F9 as described by macropod.

Can document custom property be inserted, edited and look like this?

Can document custom property be inserted, edited and look like this?

How sad..

however... I noticed that when i close the word program and reopen a new instance, my custom Doc property are gone.

But on the document itself where i put my custom doc property, items are retained.

why is that so?

• Edited by MGerio Thursday, August 02, 2012 5:21 AM

How sad..

however... I noticed that when i close the word program and reopen a new instance, my custom Doc property are gone.

But on the document itself where i put my custom doc property, items are retained.

why is that so?

• Edited by MGerio Thursday, August 02, 2012 5:21 AM

Custom document properties are stored, as the name indicates, in the document (or template). They will not be available elsewhere.

There are now two sorts of "Custom Document Property" in Word:

The old sort, where you create/maintain them in the "Advanced Properties"->Custom dialog pane, and insert them using DOCPROPERTY fields. These are not displayed in the "Document Property" drop down you display in your original post.

The new sort, which are the sort that Jaynet Zhang describes. These are typically, but not necessarily, related to columns created in a SharePoint library. When a document is opened from Sharepoint, Sharepoint inserts information about the names and values of these columns in Word. Their names then appear in the Document Property dropdown. When you insert one of the Properties from this dropdown, Word inserts a Content Control that is linked to the value of the property. However, not all the names in that dropdown are related to SharePoint properties - some are "Builtin" Properties such as Author, and others come from a special set of "Cover Page Properties" introduced in Word 2007 (Company fax, etc.)

Arguably the first sort of Property is the "true" "Custom Document Property", but since the second sort are also described as "Document Properties" and can be user-created (by a SharePoint user), and do not seem to have a well-established name, people not unnaturally refer to them using the same name as the first sort. Sometimes they are referred to as "Server Properties"

Using VBA or other coding techniques, it is theoretically possible to set up "Server Properties" without either Sharepoint or InfoPath by creating some chunks of "Custom XML" (another reason why the word "Custom" is sometimes used for these properties). However, without the server present, these properties do not work in quite the same way as the "real thing" - e.g., with the server present, there is more validation.

The thing about "Server Properties" and the other properties on the dropdown is that each Content Control is linked to a specific property held in the document's XML. If you have more than one content control linked to the same property value, when the property value is updated, the value in each of the linked Content Controls is updated automatically. That does not happen with DOCPROPERTY fields, and unfortunately it is

 a. not possible to link a Content Control directly to the value of the old type of Custom Property.

 b. either not possible, or not easy, to include DOCPROPERTY fields in the dropdown.

So which type of control you choose depends on what you are trying to achieve, and the environment you are working in.

I Wonder..

Engineer is not listed in default document property but I received a document with this doc property:

How Do I create this?

Let's step back.

There are several ways to show "repeating data" in Word documents. Greg Maxey documents most of them at
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/repeating_data.html 

You may find it useful to have a look around his site, particularly this page:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/mapped_content_controls.html

What you are showing is a Content Control with some text in it. The text might or might not be the value of a "document property".

You can make your own Content Controls in the Developer Tab (you can enable it in Word Options). You can modify the title (in this case "engineer") using the Properties button in the Developer tab. And you can type some text into the Content Control.

At that point you have a Content Control containing some text. I wouldn't personally call that a "document property," because to me a property is something that can exist independently of what you put on the document surface. In the case of Word, it is also possible to insert copies of the value of most (if not all) types of property on the document surface. For example, you can insert copies of the value of the built-in Author property using an { AUTHOR } field. Others here have described the mechanism you can use with DOCPROPERTY fields.

To do that with Content Controls, you have at least to link the Content Control with a piece of data stored outside the document surface. If someone has done that in this case, you ought to be able to do the following:

 a. copy/paste a copy of the Content Control into your document

 b. edit the text "Nikoli Tesla" in one of the Content Controls (CCs)

 c. click somewhere outside the control. 

If the content of the other control changes, then the two controls are linked to a piece of data held outside the document surface. In this case, that might have been achieved in a number of different ways, e.g.

 1. someone might have inserted one of the standard Document Properties (e.g. using insert->Quick Parts->Document Property and selecting "Comments"), then modified the Title of the property to be "engineer." In that case, modifying the value of the builtin Comments property would cause the text in the CC to change and vice versa. If so, the document creator has not created a new property, just the title used to display it in one part of their document.

 2. someone might have created and inserted a custom XML part containing an element or attribute that contains the text "Nikoli Tesla", created and inserted a Content Control with title "engineer", and linked that control to the XML element/attribute.  

At least (2) and probably (1) is/are described in the Mapped Content Controls article referenced above. 

 3. someone might have created the document in a Sharepoint library that has a column defined with the display name "engineer". In that case (unlike the other two cases above), an "engineer" property would probably (but not necessarily) be present in the drop down list of Document Properties. These types of properties are the ones sometimes described as "Server Properties", and are not currently covered by Greg in his article (for one thing, they have a more complex XML representation).

Whether you regard all those things (1), (2), (3) as Document Properties is arguable, really. They are obviously "properties of a document". The main sense in which (1), (3) and the old "Custom Document Properties" differ from (2) is that the way they are stored is defined in the ECMA/ISO standards documents for Word .docx type documents.

check this link this may help you out

Its awkward.

Seems a plain document property name insertion/customization doesn't have a simple execution.

Does it have to take a brilliant programmer to have an "add", "modify" or "rename" document property option in Microsoft Word 2010?

• Edited by MGerio Wednesday, August 22, 2012 2:47 AM

Its awkward.

Seems a plain document property name insertion/customization doesn't have a simple execution.

Does it have to take a brilliant programmer to have an "add", "modify" or "rename" document property option in Microsoft Word 2010?

• Edited by MGerio Wednesday, August 22, 2012 2:47 AM

@maan

Link is same as instruction in earlier replies.

Its awkward.

Seems a plain document property name insertion/customization doesn't have a simple execution.

Does it have to take a brilliant programmer to have an "add", "modify" or "rename" document property option in Microsoft Word 2010?

Word already has the facility to add/modify/delete a Document Property. You do that via the processes already discussed.

What you seem to not recognise is that what you're showing is not the Document Property itself but, at most, a reference to it. Of course, if you use a Content Control for maintaining the details, you could use a ContentControlOnExit macro to update the Document Property. You could even write code to add/delete such Document Properties via Content Controls, but I wouldn't recommend it.

What you seem to not recognise is that what you're showing is not the Document Property itself but, at most, a reference to it. Of course, if you use a Content Control for maintaining the details, you could use a ContentControlOnExit macro to update the Document Property. You could even write code to add/delete such Document Properties via Content Controls, but I wouldn't recomme

I pointed to Greg Maxey's site which has a lot of info on this general subject, but a more specific reference that may help you is

http://www.gmayor.com/BookmarkandVariableEditor.htm

Beyond that, one way of starting to think about the answer to your own question is to list the barriers that prevent you from creating the software you need. Then consider how much more difficult it might be to create something that is easy and reliable for other people to use.

Hi everybody,

i have a similar issue i've been struggling with for quite a long time now, i will try to give you as detailed information as possible, so please excuse my excessive writing.

I try to find a way to (automatically) enter user information (possibly from our AD) to a .docx concept template into fields or document properties or whatever possible. all of the fields reside on the front page, some of them are placed in the header and footer of the document.

Up to now, my workaround is that i simply inserted document properties and customized them with different titles, tags and styles. the only problem is, that the user has to fill in all of them including going into the header and footer sections to reach some of the properties.

This is what i either want to relocate to the properties section on the info tab, before working in the document, or that i want to be filled out automatically with user information from AD (of course excluding properties that only apply to the actual document like customer, project and so on).

I want to keep the document free from macros and add-ins whenever possible.
However, i did try vba and even tried some weird add-in and played around quite extensively with document properties and fields, but nothing worked for me the way that i wanted.

I think it has to be somehow possible to create custom fields/document properties/whatever on the front page (including header & footer) where then, when opening the document, the first thing the user should do would be typing in his or her properties on the file tab --> info.
There the user should be able to also fill in customized properties like "customer", "project name"or "type of document" without having to create custom properties each time they open the template document.

Is that possible in any way? And if so, can this be done with just fields or with document properties? i'd like to have a different style attached to each property. For example, "customer" is big and bold, whereas telephone number and email are plain and simple.

I'm no expert in directory services and also not in Word but i wonder why there's no easier built-in way to reference customized document information or any possibility to automatically retrieve user information from Active Directory. I'm sure that lots of customers would be pleased to solve this without vba or third party add-ins..

Again, sorry for the letter, i hope someone can share some ideas on this.

Thanks,
Stufe

Dear macropod,

This is great option but, for some reason, this "DocProperty" acts as standard "CustomProperty" which is limited to 255 characters.

If I use one of the "quick parts"--> "Document properties" such as "Manager, I can fill this property with Unlimited number of characters and also put some "Enters"...

Is there any option to define this DocProperty to be able to filled with more than 255 characters?

Thanks,

Orion Lidji..

Hi guys,

2 years later, and I'm trying to achieve exactly this. Thanks for your answers Peter, very interesting.

Based on your posts and your link (http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/mapped_content_controls.html), I understand that it is possible to bind a Content Control only to a builtin Document Property. It is not possible to bind them to a Custom Document Property.

One question: does anyone know if this has improved in Word 2013? Because the Content Control is so much userfriendly than {docproperty}/F9/and so on... And it is a little complex if I must have a Sharepoint server to be able to add metadata to my Word document...

This is an excellent thread. I love how painstakingly and patiently mgerio walks through all replies and leads back to the original issue, time and time again - sometimes even using several replies. He will not be deterred or allow the thread to be repurposed or construed off topic! I love the informative and valuable replies by everyone, including Peter Jamieson (despite some oddities, IMNSHO). 

Great summary of the need by RandomDSDevel. This is a could-have-been-fantastically-awesome-and-usable feature that stopped half-way, half-baked. Just opening that Quick Parts drop down makes me sad thinking of how good it could have been, the way I and many others thought it would work the first time we tried it out - so close... so close... :-)

hi, 

i am not able to enter more than 255 character in value field. if any settings available let me know pls..

hi, 

i am not able to enter more than 255 character in value field. if any settings available let me know pls..