Installation of Office Pro 2003 Problems

[SteveM]

After upgrading to Office Pro 2003 from Office 97
program, getting 2 error messages when trying to
close.,"Changes have ocurred that effect the global
template, Normal. Do you want to save those
changes? "The file Normal already exists. Do you want
to replace the existing file? I have tried uninstalling
and installing again but this isn't working and now when
I try to open a 3.5" diskette which I saved files on to,
it says the files are unavailable....Has anyone
encountered this, and how can it be fixed??

 

[SA]

Steve:

There are two different issues here; totally unrelated. The first one
related to changes taking place with the template Normal.doc, can be easily
resolved.

The prompt occurs any time that a change is made to the Word UI (e.g. say
you change an icon on a toolbar), or if you change a style default etc.
The other time it can occur is if you have a Word Macro virus on your
machine; which normally infects Normal.dot in order to propogate itself to
other documents and users.; once a document is infected it will repeatedly
try to re-infect Normal.dot, which can cause continuous prompting.

In Office 97, there was a point in time where, to protect users against the
macro virus issue, one of the updates from MS changed a default Save setting
in Word (Tools -> Options -> Save), checking the option "Prompt to Save
Changes In Normal Template".

To resolve this issue, first do a full system virus scan, being sure to scan
all doc file extensions to make sure you don't have a macro virus. Then,
you can uncheck that Word Save option if you want, which will eliminate the
prompts. (However that's not recommended; since you normally don't make
changes to Normal that would require a save and its a good marker for
potential virus issues).

On the file access issue; I've observed that this can happen on disks that
were originally formatted on a Win9.x system, which are then attempted to be
read on a Win NT / 2000 / Xp based system. Often a re-boot will solve.
If you get the disc read going, then move the files onto your hard disk,
reformat the floppy and then copy them back.

HTH

Steve Arbaugh
MS Access MVP

 

[Michael Bednarek]

After upgrading to Office Pro 2003 from Office 97
program, getting 2 error messages when trying to
close.,"Changes have ocurred that effect the global
template, Normal. Do you want to save those
changes? "The file Normal already exists. Do you want
to replace the existing file? I have tried uninstalling
and installing again but this isn't working and now when
I try to open a 3.5" diskette which I saved files on to,
it says the files are unavailable....Has anyone
encountered this, and how can it be fixed??

Steve Arbaugh answered the template question. Regarding floppies: I
strongly recommend against directly reading from, or writing to, a
floppy disk with any MS Office application. Read/write on your hard
disk, use Windows Explorer, or even better a console command, to copy
files from/to floppies.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Steve,

Since you are getting the prompt to save Normal.dot and are unable to
open previously saved files then if you also use Norton AV then in
Norton go to Options and in the Miscellaneous section turn off "Enable
Office Plug-in".

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
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