Macros Problem (Word 2003)

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Using Word 2003 and had macros and autotext when converted over from Office 2000 to Office
2003 which worked well. Now when I create a new macro, it works while I have
Word open after creating it but when I close Word and reopen the macro is not
longer there and the toolbar button disappears.
I’m stumped. Help please…I also use Word as my email editor—would that
make a difference? I also noticed I have a normal.dot under program files/ms office/templates as well as the one under my profile. Could that be causing the problem?

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Reputedly, using Word as e-mail editor works better in Office 2003 than in previous versions, but it might be worth it to try NOT doing so for a while, to see if Word acts better.

I suspect that the Normal.dot in Program Files will be ignored, and that the one in your profile is used by Word. You can test this by starting Word and looking at both folders. There will be a file ~$Normal.dot in the folder of the one that is in use. Note: this file is hidden, so you must display hidden files and folders in order to see it in Windows Explorer.

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I can think of at least two possibiltiies: (1) Normal.dot, where most macros are created, is silently failing to save; or (2) Normal.dot is being overwritten by company policy and you cannot save macros there.

To address the first issue, try forcing a save. With a document open and a new macro in Normal.dot, hold the Shift key and click File then Save All. This should save not only the template, but also Normal.dot. You might get an error or a prompt to create a new file. These could indicate a conflict with Outlook (preventing you from saving Normal.dot) or something else. Either way, let us know if you see anything special. If the save goes smoothly but the macro is not there when you restart Word, I’d suspect the second problem. In that case, you would need to save your macros in a global template. This is much more work to describe, so I’ll skip the details unless they’re needed.

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Hey dude, the forced save worked. Now, do I have to do this everytime or is there a fix for this undocumented feature?

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There might be some “exit” code that throws away changes to Normal.dot when you close Word. If so, you will need to use this workaround (or another workaround) every time you write a macro. Perhaps, though, you could get the policy changed. Throwing away changes could have other negative effects because, for example, AutoText entries and styles you created also would be lost. And that could be bad for productivity and morale.

Added: I was assuming this is a business environment. If this is a home environment, it could be that one of your add-ins is adding and removing toolbars and telling Word that Normal.dot has not been updated. That is harder to fix…

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