How do I transfer Word preferences to a new copy of Word?

[grammatim]

I've just gotten a new hard drive and reinstalled Office (I only use Word).
I'd like to transfer my existing settings -- principally the long-in-progress
customization of the Toolbars and the changes to Autocorrect As You Type --
that I perfected over the years to the new copy.

The old hard drive is now serving as an external hard drive, so I can
retrieve anything that was on it (would it involve simply copying a folder?),
but its System was badly corrupted, so if it's something that doesn't simply
appear somewhere within the Office folder, maybe it can't be done?

NB Microsoft wouldn't allow me to enter my real email address, grammatim at
verizon dot net, so it won't automatically notify me of responses, so I'd
appreciate it if you could send an email copy of your response to me at that
email.

Thank you!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

When you create a profile, you can certainly enter your real email address;
you are simply discouraged from displaying it here. For backup suggestions,
see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/FilesToBackup.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/ExportAutocorrect.htm

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

IF and only if you are on a Mac--the word "preferences" is very common
there and I'm not sure Windows uses it--see here:
http://word.mvps.org/mac/BackUpPrefs.html

In that case, also, see here for Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups
for MacWord, MacExcel, and other MS programs for the Mac:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>

Mac or Windows note--you actually don't want to enter your real name,
because you'll get a ton of spam. The web interface has a notification
system (I think), and you can always find your posts and replies by
searching on your posting name.

 

[grammatim]

No; when I typed my email address, it told me that "verizon.net" is some
special sort of domain and not acceptable in an email address, and demanded
that I open a hotmail account, which I refuse to do.

You did not, however, respond to my question; the urls you provided relate
to working copies of Office and describe procedures that are not mentioned in
any Word manual I've ever seen. I need to recover the settings from an
unbootable drive.

I have since tried booting from the external drive, because I discovered the
"Office Tool" called "Save My Settings Wizard," and simply saw on my
otherwise blank screen for several minutes "Attempting to boot from USB
device."

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, I missed the fact that your old copy is not accessible, but if you can
access files at all, you should be able to access the files mentioned in
those articles. And I can't imagine why the Web site wouldn't accept
verizon.net.

 

[grammatim]

Is top-posting the preferred mode in ms groups?

At any rate, I had the leisure just now to search for all .asl files
on the old drive, and three containing Auto-Correct data were found.
All had very old dates. Looking at them in Notepad, I found a French
one, a German one, and a US English one -- but it didn't include any
of my additions (such as "langauge > language").

Is there some other extension to search for?

There were also several files where ".asl" was not the last element in
the filename, with dates that suggest they're what I'm looking for,
but when I tried to open one in Notepad, I didn't notice till too late
that Windows XP had decided to try to open it with Adobe Reader 8.1,
which didn't work, and thereafter, I was not offered the opportunity
to select a different app. This group of files had a pathname that
included "Java."

Thank you for any further advice.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

AutoCorrect files are .acl not .asl. Which one did you search for?

 

[grammatim]

Well, since I found three of them, I must have done it correctly.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If I search for *.acl just within my own profile, I find 11 files, all in
C:\Documents and Settings\Suzanne S. Barnhill\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office. Each one is a different language, which is curious
since, AFAIK, I have proofing tools for only English, French, and Spanish,
so I would not expect to find AutoCorrect files for any other languages. In
any case, most of the files are just 1 KB. Of the ones that are larger, only
two have been modified in 2007, and one of those is the English one (1033);
the other is 1024, whatever that is. The rest date back to 2001 or 2002.

I'm not sure what all that means, or that it would be at all helpful--just a
comparison.

 

[grammatim]

You can look at the 1024 one in Notepad.

If I search for *.acl just within my own profile, I find 11 files, all in
C:\Documents and Settings\Suzanne S. Barnhill\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office. Each one is a different language, which is curious
since, AFAIK, I have proofing tools for only English, French, and Spanish,
so I would not expect to find AutoCorrect files for any other languages. In
any case, most of the files are just 1 KB. Of the ones that are larger, only
two have been modified in 2007, and one of those is the English one (1033);
the other is 1024, whatever that is. The rest date back to 2001 or 2002.

I'm not sure what all that means, or that it would be at all helpful--just a
comparison.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.







- Show quoted text -

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I did. It appears to be English. <?>

You can look at the 1024 one in Notepad.

If I search for *.acl just within my own profile, I find 11 files, all in
C:\Documents and Settings\Suzanne S. Barnhill\Application
Data\Microsoft\Office. Each one is a different language, which is curious
since, AFAIK, I have proofing tools for only English, French, and Spanish,
so I would not expect to find AutoCorrect files for any other languages. In
any case, most of the files are just 1 KB. Of the ones that are larger, only
two have been modified in 2007, and one of those is the English one (1033);
the other is 1024, whatever that is. The rest date back to 2001 or 2002.

I'm not sure what all that means, or that it would be at all helpful--just a
comparison.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Well, since I found three of them, I must have done it correctly.

AutoCorrect files are .acl not .asl. Which one did you search for?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Is top-posting the preferred mode in ms groups?

At any rate, I had the leisure just now to search for all .asl files
on the old drive, and three containing Auto-Correct data were found.
All had very old dates. Looking at them in Notepad, I found a French
one, a German one, and a US English one -- but it didn't include any
of my additions (such as "langauge > language").

Is there some other extension to search for?

There were also several files where ".asl" was not the last element in
the filename, with dates that suggest they're what I'm looking for,
but when I tried to open one in Notepad, I didn't notice till too late
that Windows XP had decided to try to open it with Adobe Reader 8.1,
which didn't work, and thereafter, I was not offered the opportunity
to select a different app. This group of files had a pathname that
included "Java."

Thank you for any further advice.