Originally asked Is there a way to make your Word documents/PDF files look like they're "old"?

Old as in appearance or appear to have been saved with past date information?

For the latter, you could probably set the system date back before creating and working on the document. However, a Word (or PDF) document contains a lot of metadata: various dates (printed, created, modified, etc.); version info (for the app, but also add-ins like language packs) — so you'd need to avoid being online or using a version of Word that doesn't fit the date. And then there are clues like the choice of font: you’d better be sure that the specific font you use was actually available on the date you choose.

Bottom line? A forensic analysis could almost certainly find something that would disprove a false claim. Don't do it.

But can you create the effect of old? Certainly!

• Choose an suitable font for the period. Discerning readers will instantly recognize new web fonts (like Candara, Comic Sans, Merriweather, etc.), so do some digging to find a font that is suited to the period you want. (Font faces like Times, Garamond, Baskerville, or Bookman Old Style are based on designs from the hot lead period, so might be suitable for dates going back into the late 1800s.)
• Apply a background that makes the pages look old. You can probably find suitable images that look like antique paper, and some may even include things like stains or tear marks. To get the image behind your text, set it as a watermark. Alternatively, you could place it within a Header and set the text wrapping to “Behind”. Then use the Layout dialog to size it to slightly larger than the paper size and positioned very slightly above & to the left of the upper left corner. This will make the image appear behind every page (and you could then use slightly different ones for first, odd and even pages).
• Pay attention to the spelling, grammar and word usage. Words change over time and for different locations, both in spelling and usage: for example, a letter may start with “Dear Ms Smith” today, but the “Ms” part would be meaningless in a 1930s context — and the greeting would probably have been much more formal and flowery in a letter to a woman in 1890. Similarly, contractions may not be correct for the age: “ain’t” would seem odd today as an alternative to “isn’t” (and neither might have been unsuitable for use in a formal letter or document).
• Use time-relevant page and paper dimensions. While “A” type paper dimensions are ubiquitous now (at least outside of North America), they didn’t exist before 1922 — and then only in Germany before being adopted as a wider standard in 1975. The US Letter size only became a US government standard dimension in the 1980s. Moreover, preferences for margins and page layouts have changed as word processing has become ubiquitous: a typewriter could not manage justified left & right margins; nor was it practical to have multiple columns on a page.

The most sure way to accurately mimic the look of an old document would be to find examples in a library to use as a guide.

There are two aspects to this.

First, you may just like the document to look like it’s from a certain period of time. If we talk Word, it’s been around since the time of the 8-bit personal computers, say the 1980s. That’s relatively easy. You need to study the typography and language of that period and use the fonts, typesetting conventions, and language used back then. All these aspects change quite rapidly. You might think about getting an old version of Word with its ways of formatting and set of fonts, or even some other word processor. If you think about the period before personal computers and photosetting appeared, then things might get more complicated. The old movable lead type typesetting process (known since Guttenberg's times) leads inevitably to small irregularities which may be very difficult to mimick. Not speaking about manuscripts. Despite the scribes of old have been quite skilled there are still many more irregularities in the manuscripts.

Second, if you talk about the document which would pretend it’s been created long ago then you’re in a much tougher space. All documents created using a computer carry along with them tons of metadata, such as the app identification, including the version of it. The date created which is normally taken from the system clock. Font information, such as the glyph type, version, etc. There are simply so many clues to the real date of the document that you’re bound to fail miserably.

Word is “printer-driven” rather than, as is Excel, “display driven.”

In other words: Excel is more concerned with how a spreadsheet looks onscreen and doesn’t really care about printing, but Word is constantly in conversation with the printer driver about how the document will print. This is technically termed the “device context.”

When you change target printers, Word adjusts its display to reflect how that printer will render your document. A 300-dpi inkjet will print differently than a 2400-dpi Linotronic imagesetter because of resolution-dependence.

When you export as PDF from Word, you are changing the device context, and right before the datastream goes to the PDF engine, Word adjusts the look of the document to what the PDF printer-driver tells it. Document recomposition is a very well-known issue in all desktop-publishing, and the solution is to compose for the target printer.

Microsoft has been at pains to minimize document recomposition in Word since version 6/95, and later versions are much better about this than in earlier versions, but not perfect. You can revert to the old way of doing things in the Options, Compatibility tab, “Use printer metrics to lay out document.”

The other issue you will have is font substitution. If you are using a font that does not exist on the system where the file is opened, Windows will substitute a font with similar characteristics and probably change the look of your PDF. google “font substitution” and “font embedding” for more info.

So the rollup: Make your PDF engine the default printer while laying-out your document if your layout is delicate.

Word is an editable document format.

There is no formal guarantee that any editable document will look the same in two different editors. It may look different even in two different versions of Word.

PDF is the only true representation of a printed page.

Moreover, the Word file format (.doc or .docx), so dear to Microsoft, is not particularly good at following international standards. OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp) is a MUCH better file format to save your work in, if you need to be sure that you will be able to open that file 50 years from now, in different editors of the time.

BTW, there was a joke about the RTF file format. They asked: “What is a RTF file?” And the correct answer is: “A RTF file is THAT bunch of data the computer saves on the disk when you press the “Save as RTF” button” :-) In other words, only God and Microsoft knows what that file really contains - and about Microsoft I’m not 100% sure… :-) :-) :-)

You're not trying forge a legal document are you? I don't think I want to part of this, if so. :)

In any event, there is nothing to do. Paper will not have any discernable visual differences after only five years. I'm looking at some right now (from my file cabinet). They look as brand new as the day I printed them. Under a microscope, there may be some detectable degradation differences, but if so, they would be undetectable to the naked eye.

For what it's worth, I think the tea method makes the document look about 200 years old, not five.
http://www.mevsthehouse.com/how-to-make-paper-look-old-by-aging-it-with-tea

This is generally a job for dedicated platforms that provide security and access tools for your PDFs. For example, HelpRange provides an expiration date so that the link ‘self destructs’ on your chosen day. So you would upload your PDF to HelpRange, you would then get a dedicated link, this link leads to your customizable document viewer where your PDF is visible. There is another feature that lets you disable the downloading and printing of your PDFs. So combining the two security measures ensures your PDF is secured.

Outside of these platforms, I would say that this would be difficult for someone that is non-tech or doesn’t have a budget to spend on building out a dedicated viewer and toggle options.

Yes, either using a third party software or just using Batch script.

1. Check out this software: Cyber-D's Autodelete 3.12 if you prefer third party, it actually does what you want exactly.

2. This tutorial shows something similar using batch files and task scheduler: Auto Delete All Files Of a Folder, Desktop After A Time Interval

3.This very simple batch script does basically the same job:

@echo off 
ping -n 11 127.0.0.1 > NUL 
del "test.txt" 
exit 

To use it, just open a text file, copy and paste these lines and save it as a .bat file in the same folder as the file you want to delete. Notice that you need to specify the time (in seconds) and the name of the file in the batch script.

In my example, the number of seconds specified in line 2 is "11" (after "ping -n") to make it wait for 10 seconds (you always write n+1 instead of n), the name of the file is "test.txt", specified in line 3.

If you don't want to put the files in the same folder, just explicitly specify the path in the del command. For example:
del "c:\anyfolder\test.txt"

Now your batch file is ready to run, when you run it you'll notice that it opens a CMD window you could either minimize it or just use another script to make it hidden:

CreateObject("Wscript.Shell").Run "test.bat",0,True

This script should be written alone in a .vbs file that is saved next to the batch script file. This time instead of double clicking the batch file, double click the .vbs and the command line window won't appear.

I encourage you , if you spend a lot of time on computers, to learn Batch scripts and AutoHotkeys. Scripting is a valuable skill that you'll get in relatively short time and will magnificently help you with computers.