See the article "Distributing macros to other users" at:
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DistributeMacros.htm
Fellow MVP Jonathon West who created that article provides the following
reasons for following that approach:
1. If you send a document to a customer, its attached network template is
unavailable (because it is on your network, not his). The customer may
suffer very long delays (2 minutes or more) before the document finally
appears on screen. This is because Windows can take a long time before
finally deciding that no reply is going to come from the network location
that Word requests. If the attached template is on a local drive, the
existence of the template can be checked very quickly, and so the document
opens immediately even if the template is not available. Microsoft is aware
of this problem, see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830561. Microsoft does
have an operating system fix for the problem, but if you email documents to
people outside your organisation, you cannot assume that they will have the
fix installed.
2. If the network or server goes down, quite enough of the organisation's
operations are likely to grind to a halt without unnecessarily adding
word-processing to the list by making templates unavailable for use.
3. Storing templates & add-ins locally means that users with laptops don't
need a different setup. Their templates are stored locally in just the same
way as for permanently connected desktop machines, and they can receive
updates next time they connect to the network.
4. Templates and add-ins stored locally usually load faster, reducing
startup time and improving response times for Word.
5. Templates and add-ins stored locally don't load the network with
avoidable traffic, improving performance for other applications that must
use the network.
6. Editing and updating a template at a network location is much easier if
you don't have to break everyone's lock on the file in order to replace a
template with an updated version.
7. If a user manages to mess up a template (it happens sometimes) the only
person affected is himself, and the situation can be rectified quite easily
with a re-install.
8. If templates include VBA code, I have found that occasionally the code
behaves differently if the template is open concurrently on two different
PCs. I've never been able to identify the precise circumstance that will
trigger this, but when it has occurred, I have been able to reproduce it by
having the template open on one or two machines and seeing the actions of
the macro. This kind of problem is an absolute support nightmare, so I
always ensure that my templates are always stored locally.
--
Hope this helps.
Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.
Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
