Normal.dot(s) (Word2000 SR1 Win NT 4.0 (patch 6))

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We are testing office 2000 with a group and have been having some difficulties nailing down normal.dot which we customized for our numbering, deselection of various Word ‘intellisence’ such as Auto Format as You Type.
Word has this nasty habit of dropping normal dots in various locations: i.e. we want ours to live only in C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeTemplates but Word puts one in c:WinntProfilespoApplication DataMicrosoftTemplates. It also places a third template in another location – can’t remember exactly where.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening? Any ideas how to make it stop spewing out normal.dots at will?
We have one user who logs off at night, in the morning on bootup she has a different normal dot – the first one that we thought we might use but later changed. And the file locations (Tools, Options, File Locations) seem to change ‘at will’. Any help would be appreciated.

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Patricia,

Don’t put these kinds of global customizations into Normal.dot – only heartbreak can follow.

As far as numbering and other style-related formatting, this should go into document templates i.e. specific templates that documents get based on.

As far as other global environment settings, these can be set via a global template that is placed in the Startup directory. Some changes to the global environment can be done manually in the global template (for example, adding toolbars or menus). Others might better be done via VBA code (for example, you can have a procedure in the global template that runs every time Word is launched, that sets all of the options such as AutoFormat as You Type, to whatever you want them to be.)

Gary

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Hi Patricia,

For more on global templates see Template Basics.

Most of the settings you are talking about are in the registry. I would suspect that if you try to hack the registry directly you will set off alarm bells somewhere. Also, doing so is not a good idea until you know what you are doing – this is not something to try at work kids!

However, the MVP FAQ does have some methods for preserving registry settings with a macro. Search for “registry data key” and you should get some ideas.

For thoughts on moving customizations to a global template, see Copying / Moving Customizations .

Hope this helps,

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Thanks all, for your responses. The customizations made to normal consist of headings and fonts. We always base our documents on the firm’s templates available from our menu toolbar and/or L:@templates (workgroup). We have not had any problems with respect to this.
The current issue is the fact the Word drops in these extraneous normal.dots which are not consistent with the normal dot we want to use.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is happening? Can you tell us how to eradicate the problem of extra normal dots?
Thanks in advance,

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Thanks, BAM. I think that’s exactly right & have passed the info along to our network systems engineer.

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