Normal and Abnormal Templates (Office XP)

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I recently switched to XP on both machines that I use. I saved my customized normal.dot before the switch so that my keyboard shortcuts and toolbars would be saved. After installation, I put the normal.dot in the C:Documents and SettingsmyusernameApplication DataMicrosoftTemplates folder.

I also installed Adobe Acrobat and Mathtype. Both add macros and toolbars. On one machine everything’s fine (almost). The other isn’t fine. When I opened word, it wasn’t using my modified normal.dot. It used the default one. When I tried to change some things and exit, I received the message that I couldn’t change PDFmaker.dot. Now I’m not sure what to do. How do I get my old template back?

On the machine with my edited normal template, I can’t permanently remove the pdf toolbar. It comes back everytime.

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Cathy,

Have you searched to find all instances of Normal on the misbehaving machine.. the default one must be created somewhere, have you checekd where your UserTemplates are located? (Tools, options, file locations, user templates).

PDF maker is usually loaded in the global templates location ( the word startup folder) my guess it oit’s set to read only and the things that you are trying to change belong to that template. The pdf toolbar is coming back because its set to be visible in the template. So If you’re sure about evrything set the pdfmaker.dot attribute to not be read only (using Explorer and veiw the File Properties) then make your changes, they should save successfully and give you what you want.

liz

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I checked all of the templates that I think load at start-up and the start-up location. No file has read-only checked, so I still am stuck.

Here’s the details of where everything is located.

User Templates:
C:Documents and SettingscshenoyApplication DataMicrosoft

I only have one normal.dot in
C:Documents and SettingscshenoyMy DocumentsProfileMicrosoftTemplates

There are three PDMaker.dots in:
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeTemplates1033PDFMaker.dot
C:Program FilesAdobeAcrobat 5.0PDFMakerPDFMaker.dot
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10StartupPDFMaker.dot

There are two ‘MathType Commands 5 For Word.dot’ located in:
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10Startup
C:Program FilesMathTypeOffice Support

I would appreciate any suggestions.

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Cathy,

Well no solution but a couple of observations.

User Templates:
C:Documents and SettingscshenoyApplication DataMicrosoft
liz: I assume that this is the location specified in Tools,Options, File Locations?

I only have one normal.dot in
C:Documents and SettingscshenoyMy DocumentsProfileMicrosoftTemplates
liz: I can’t see how it gets to this as Word looks for Normal in the user templates folder then the workgroup template folder, if it doesn’t find one it creates a default on in the User template location. So is this directory defined as the workgroup templates location? I can’t remember how the profile directory is used (which release of Windows are you?) as all my profile information is stored in the application data file these days and I have not profile folder

There are three PDMaker.dots in:
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeTemplates1033PDFMaker.dot
C:Program FilesAdobeAcrobat 5.0PDFMakerPDFMaker.dot
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10StartupPDFMaker.dot
liz: the template in Startup will load as a global template on startup, assuming this if the location specified in Tools, Options, File Locations, Startup. If you get a “can’t update… ” message I would expect that this is read only if it isn’t it’s a bit of a mystery. The other copies will not be loaded as global, the one in PDFMaker is a backup, the other I’m not sure about I don’t think it’s needed.

There are two ‘MathType Commands 5 For Word.dot’ located in:
C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice10Startup
C:Program FilesMathTypeOffice Support
liz: as for PDF template

keep digging

liz

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Try it again. Copy your “custom” normal.dot again to the folder indicated by
Tools>Options>FileLocations, Startup.

For troubleshooting purposes, you might want to disable all the add-ins first,
get your Normal working, then add the addins one by one.

Further trouble may indicate either a corrupted Normal.dot or registry keys or
both. Check out Phil’s star post: post 197827

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Last update. Thanks for all of your help. I tried all of the above. I still couldn’t save any changes to normal.dot. Finally, I called Design Science to make sure that Mathtype wasn’t doing anything. They told me that since I was trying to use a normal.dot created in Office 2000 that might be causing a problem. I deleted the normal.dot, made changes, saved them with no problem.

It’s good news and bad news. I can make changes to normal.dot, but I had a lot of changes, especially keystrokes, that will take a while to redo.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I would like to plug Mathtype and Design Science. Their product is great and their Tech Support has always been very helpful.

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Hi Cathy:
When upgrading to a new version of Word, it’s best to use the new version of normal.dot. I know how you feel about losing cutomizations. However, you can copy many of those using the Organizer. To copy shortcut keys, download Chris Woodard’s utility here.

Cheers,

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