I'm in the same situation now but I don't think overlays are "text" they are images, so to change the text that may have been inserted onto the image overlay, you'd have to recreate the overlay.

What I think you do is use WORD to create the new/replacement overlay and then write to the IBM IPDS writing/printer driver on your PC. You have to download and install those drivers, then write to them similar to writing to a PDF driver.

Then you use the OVL CL commands.

Any overlay, *OVL object, is an AFP object. Not sure what you mean by "OLD" form; overlays are overlays. It's an AFP thing.

Last used date on the *OVL object is accurate. Be aware that DDS or the *FILE PRTF object can use *LIBL or explicit library name. If in the DDS, not the *FILE object, the overlay name itself can be passed as a program-to-system field, so you may also need to look at the programs that use the printer file.

I don't know of any way to change an *OVL; you have to replace it by recreating it. If you don't have one of the AFP design tools, there is a way to do it from Windows, as Bob suggested. It's described in the Redbook, AS/400 Printing V, chapter 5. You need the AFP printer driver (which appears as a Windows printer), which you install with System i Access for Windows. The pictures in the Redbook are from an older version of Windows, but it's not hard to visualize those screenshots for current version of Windows and the current version of the driver itself.

Basically, you print your Word doc (or whatever) to the AFP "printer" as a file. The Redbook explains the settings you must use. You can print as an overlay or as a page segment. Then you create a physical file with specific record length, etc., and upload the file created by the printer driver. Finally, you CRTOVL (or CRTPAGSEG) from that file.