With much help from the giant brains on this forum, I've been working on a simple Engineering Change form in Excel.  It is set up with each cell as a named range, linked to a Custom Property.  Using Office 2007 (xlsx).

I created a file card for xlsx with all the fields mapped to variables, just like other cards.  I created a Template Card with all the input fields except for the ECNumber field, which will get its value from a Serial Number, not user input.

I created a Serial Number for automatically generating the new ECNumber.  It is set up the same way as those I use for new part numbers, etc.

I created a Template that has Template Variables of type Format String for all fields except ECNumber, which has a Template Variable of type Serial Number, linked to the ECNumber Serial Number I created above.

I set the filename to EC%ECNumber%.xlsx and mapped the Template Variables to their corresponding File Card Variables.

So far, so good, but here's the problem:

When I use the template from the menu item, it creates the file with the correct number (next in line in the Serial Number), and it correctly populates the file card, but no values show in the cells in the Preview Pane.  If I check out the new EC file and open it in Excel, all the fields are correctly populated except the ECNumber cell, which is blank.  Then I save the EC file, check it back in, and suddenly the File Card shows the value of the Date field where the ECNumber should be.  Somehow the value is getting corrupted when I save the Excel file.

Symptoms:

1. ECNumber never shows in the linked cell in the Excel file
2. After saving the Excel file, the ECNumber field in the file card takes the value from the Date field (which is just text).

I'm so new to this that I have no clue where to look for the problem.  The mechanisms I'm using are working 95%, but what the heck is wrong with the ECNumber ?

Brian-