Have you tried the Save All function after doing a customisation of
Autotext/toolbar/menu entry?
After whatever change, press Shft+File, Save All, close Word, and reopen to
see if the change has been retained. To Save All in Word 2007, you will have
to add that command to the Quick Access Toolbar (via Office button | Word
Options, Customize category).
If this works, question for you, do you have Acrobat installed?
The Acrobat addin can cause some changes not to be saved to the Normal.dot,
such as new Autotext/toolbar/menu entries, etc.
If you do have Acrobat then have a look at this webpage below, especially
the section on Add/Remove Program, Modify. I had similar problems with
Customise and Autotext/toolbar/menu, doing the following solved the problem
BUT I also found that if you do the instructions and then reboot, Open and
close word, then reverse the Modify instructions, the Acrobat functions
return without the clashes with saving Customise and Autotext/toolbar/menu.
http://www.gmayor.com/lose_that_adobe_acrobat_toolbar.htm
Hope this helps
DeanH