D F3 broken - and can't seem to fix it

[bwp123]

DF3 used to be set to insert the date (in my preferred format) as today’s date in plain text (!) (not the same fixed date ie. always the date that I set it up) and not a date that updates each time I opened the document.
The obvious convenience of this, one can set the date of entries like entries in a diary.
Now our only choice seems to be either the pasted date being “February 20, 2022” forever, no matter what day it is today, OR, a correct current date, but with a gray box around it that prevents me from placing the cursor within, or changing the typeface of the date.
Don’t know why it broke, but I believe it was a product of updating LO to the latest version. Now I can’t for the life of me recall nor figure out how to restore the d F3 shortcut to the format I want, that is, today’s date in plain text, and not updating all of the old dates to a different incorrect date every time I open a document to add to it.
Please if you know straightforward answer to how to restore this simple task, I would very much appreciate your help.
Thank you.

Version: 7.2.5.2 (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 499f9727c189e6ef3471021d6132d4c694f357e5
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19043; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL

[ajlittoz]

This looks to me like a custom AutoText because factory shortcuts wouldn’t be set to a single letter (though there are 2-letter ones).

To recreate your AutoText, add the date in the document as:

• Insert>Field>More Fields
• in Document tab, choose Date in Type, Date (fixed) in Select and the desired Format
• press Insert and close the dialog
• select the field just inserted and Tools>AutoText
• give it a Name: and a Shortcut: (by default it is the first letter of the name, which suggest you created the AutoText)
• press AutoText and New in the drop-down menu
• Close to exit the dialog

The new AutoText is stored in your user profile and is available for all your documents.

PS:
Since the “date” is field, it is inserted as a single atomic unit. You can’t “place the cursor within”, but it can be selected as a whole and you can apply a character style on it to change its appearance (or use menus and tool bar buttons but this kind of direct formatting is not recommended in professional writing).

[bwp123]

Thank you for the concise clear instruction!
The one step I did only slightly differently was the last, pressing AutoText and New: there is an option to choose New (text only) and I chose that, which achieved the desired result. The date can now be inserted without the field box. Rather it is now in the same font and style etc as the Text Body format I use throughout ordinary documents that I need.
Suits my purposes perfectly.
Many thanks!

[ajlittoz]

This is strange. The inserted field should look the same as the surrounded paragraph. Unless, of course, if you had direct formatting in effect when you created the AutoText, in which case the direct formatting is also recorded which overrides the paragraph and character styles. You can tell by selecting the fields and Ctrl+M to clear direct formatting.