“Company” property

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Dear experts,

Word 97 (alone–no Office) on Windows 98:

Whenever I create a new document using “Blank Document”, the new document’s FilePropertiesCompany property contains the name of my computer vendor’s company. I would like to change that, but I can’t figure out where. The vendor was no help either.
I thought that choosing “Blank Document” was equivalent to specifying normal.dot, but editing that file’s FilePropertiesCompany didn’t make any difference.
I also searched the registry for the vendor name with no luck. Where is Word getting this information?
I also note that when Word starts up, it briefly displays a “This program is licensed to:” panel which contains the vendor’s name as well as “Preferred Customer”, which was what my ToolsOptionsUser InformationName was until I changed that. ???

Any suggestions?

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Go to the General Office Solutions forum, and do a search on “Company name” – and another search on “user name” – these will point you to some previous threads with discussion of this topic.

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I did the search and learned that the problem is likely that the information is stored in winword.exe.
I could not find out how to change this.
The reference to http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ar…s/Q233/4/99.ASP
looked promising, but the procedute applies to Office 2000, which I do not have. My registry does not contain a key called “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUninstallGUID
where GUID is the Product Code for the version of Office installed; for example, {00000409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7}. ”
perhaps because there is no version of Office installed. My computer came with Works installed, not Office. Works does include Word however.
This seemed to baffle the experts at the vendor (OK, I will now reveal who that is: Dell), even though they sold ne this configuration.
Any other suggestions?

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The first thing I would do is locate normal.dot by clicking the taskbar & pressing F3. Then type normal.dot. Right click & choose Open. Go to properties. Erase Dell or whatever is the company name. Now the property sheet should be blank for new documents.

For other places where the vendor appears:
Go to Start/Run & type regedit.
Press Ctrl+F to bring up Find.
Then type in the company name that keeps coming up.
When you find it, either delete the value or put in your own company.

Post back & let us know what happened.

Hope this helps.

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Thanks for your reply, but..

>> The first thing I would do is locate normal.dot by
>> clicking the taskbar & pressing F3. Then type
>> normal.dot. Right click & choose Open. Go to properties.
>> Erase Dell or whatever is the company name. Now the
>> property sheet should be blank for new documents.

I did that long ago; it doesn’t help. As I said in the original post: “Whenever I create a new document using “Blank Document”, the new document’s FilePropertiesCompany property contains the name of my computer vendor’s company.” To wit: “Dell Computer Corporation”
One of the messages in the Lounge’s Windows area said that the company name is stored in the winword.exe file, which is consistent with what I observe. Still need a way to change that.

>> For other places where the vendor appears:
>> Go to Start/Run & type regedit.
>> Press Ctrl+F to bring up Find.
>> Then type in the company name that keeps coming up.

OK. It occurs in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateOemInfo, in the SmbOem value

>> When you find it, either delete the value or put in your
>> own company.
>> Post back & let us know what happened.
>> Hope this helps.

I changed the registry; I rebooted. I checked the Registry to confirm the change was made. The problem persists: the change made no difference whatsoever.
Which is what I would expect if the string is indeed inside the Word executable (winword.exe), NOT in the Registry.

(Sigh) Well, since Dell couldn’t help me, despite the fact that they obviously put the string wherever it is in the first place, I guess I was unrealistic to expect anyone else to be able to fix this problem.

Anyone else care to take a crack?
Assuming the string IS in winword.exe, is there a way to change it there?
If we were back in DOS, I’d use DEBUG, but…..

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The Company Name and User Name are in:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftMS Setup (ACME)

Have you tried changing this entry?

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Thanks for the effort, but…

>> The Company Name and User Name are in:
>> HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftMS Setup (ACME)
>> Have you tried changing this entry?

Yes! No effect.
Please, folks! I am fairly certain that this is NOT a Registry problem.

I repeat: anyone know how to verify that the offending string is inside winword.exe?
Anyone know how I could change it?

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When you searched the registry for the Company name, did you stop at the first occurrence. I would advise continuing the search until the entire registry is searched. I don’t think I ever searched for anything that did not have multiple entries.

Try re-installing the package. That might give you the chance to select the company and user names. If it does, and you can enter something that could not possibly be in the registry now, you could then search the registry for the name you chose, and see what keys were changed.

If it is stored in winword.exe, and assuming it is not encrypted, a Hex Editor might find it, but I would advise against altering it, at least not without backing up. Even then, I would be cautious. If Microsoft are embedding that sort if information in their executables, you would not know what checking is carried out when the program is executed.

Andrew C

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According to Q244080 :

To permanently change the company property in all user-defined templates and the Normal template in Microsoft Word 97, follow these steps:

1. Remove Microsoft Word 97.

2. Use either of the following methods to reinstall Word 97:

a. If you are reinstalling from a compact disc, place the correct information in the Name dialog box.

b. If you are reinstalling from disks, you need to reinstall from a new set of disks, because company information is permanently written to the disks during installation.

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From Word 6 to Word 97 the Company name has been stored in Winword.exe.

The only way to change it is to uninstall/reinstall.

Now hopefully Dell provided you the licensed copy of Word that you paid for so you can accomplish this.

If they did not include the original MS installation CD for Word (I’m not talking about their “recovery disk”), then I would be on the phone demanding what I paid for.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Cheers!

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Does this fix apply to Word 2000 as well? i.e., Uninstall then re-install from CD

I have the same problem but with Gateway. I do have a separate original CD of Office 2000 Professional.
TIA

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No.

For Office 2000 see article Q233499.

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Well, here’s a workaround that I find quite useful even if one is not intersted in changing the Company name.

Make a copy of your normal.dot. Call it FirmNormal.dot. Open FirmNormal and make any changes you want in the way of styles, font size, etc.,etc. And while you’re in there, open the property sheet and change the Company to what you want. Save FirmNormal to your Workgroup Templates folder.

If you are a stand alone user the next step involves making a change to your Normal.dot. If you are a corporate programmer/admin/hacker/refrigeration tech you should make this change to the global addin that all your users invoke when they start Word (shameless plug for a useful technique!)

Here’s the rub:

Create a macro called FileNewDefault. Like this:

Sub FileNewDefault()
    On Error GoTo UseRealNormal
    Documents.Add (Options.DefaultFilePath(wdWorkgroupTemplatesPath) + "FirmNormal.dot")
    ActiveDocument.AttachedTemplate.Saved = True
    ActiveDocument.Saved = True
    Exit Sub
UseRealNormal:
    Documents.Add
    ActiveDocument.Saved = True
End Sub

Save Normal.dot. Now create a blank doc. Company?

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For Office 97 and earlier (per)versions of Office, only way to change Registration info for Office is to UNINSTALL and then REINSTALL Office.

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