Can’t find normal.dot (2003 sp2)

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I have a user who is trying to change her default font. She changes it, but it won’t stay. So, I thought I’d try deleting her normal.dot since this font change is the only thing she has tried to change. I can’t find it! I have hidden files showing and I’m searching for normal.dot on her local hard drives, but it doesn’t show. I tried looking at her network drives, and it’s not there either. I rebooted her PC and still, when I hope Word and then close it, there is no normal.dot. Is this even possible? I assume Word has it stored somewhere and I’m just not looking in the right place. So… how can I tell where Word is storing her normal.dot? Like I said, I used Explore’s search and didn’t find normal.dot on any of her local drives.

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Let her select Tools | Options…, activate the Save tab and tick the check box “Prompt to save Normal template”, then click OK.
If she then changes the default font and quits Word, does she actually get prompted to save Normal.dot?

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Good idea – but no. I just tried it, and it does not ask to save changes to normal.dot after checking the tick box and then trying to change her default font.

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That means that something is preventing Normal.dot from being saved. I would suspect an add-in, such as the Adobe Acrobat add-in which is notorious for killing Word customizations. Let her try Phil Rabichow’s Systematic Approach to Behavioral Problems in Word.

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My understanding is that you are looking for the location of the actual normal.dot template file. Two ways to find it…the easy way…or the long way.

Easy way: Open Word, click on File/New (use the menu and not the icon). In the task pane at the right click on Templates/On my computer. This opens the Templates dialog box. Click on the template radio button. Click OK (make sure the blank document icon is selected before you click OK). That opens a new Template1. Now save the template and it defaults to the template folder (buried under Documents and Settings/User Name/Application Data/Microsoft/Templates). You will see the Normal.dot template file right where it lives. To see the back, keep clicking the back button and you will see the hierarchy for the path.

The hard way: In Explore, go to Tools/Folder Options/View, check the choice for “show hidden files and folders” and check “display the contents of system folders”. Go back to Word, select either File/Open or File/Save as and from the dialog box, select the same path as above in the easy way. Select My Computer/C:drive/Documents and Settings/User Name/Application Data/MIcrosoft/Templates….and there it is. The advantage to doing it this way (without Word being open) is that you will be able to delete the Normal.dot template file because there are no “open” documents based on the template.

Remember, you won’t be able to delete Normal.dot if any Word files are open based on this template. And don’t worry about deleting it because Word will automatically create a new Normal.dot based on the “factory” settings.

There may be an easier solution by the way. You didn’t mention if your user clicked the default button at the bottom of the fonts dialog box (when the font was changed) then answered the prompt “yes” to save the change to the Normal.dot template.

Hope this isn’t too convoluted and helps you.

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The even easier way. In Word go to Tools > Options > File locations…. and double click “User Templates”

StuartR

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