My first GLOBAL TEMPLATE

[Diane]

I have created my first global template, allowing me to remove about 400
autotext entries from each user's normal.dot and moving these into a group
template named "groupautotext.dot". The "groupautotext.dot" has now been
copied into a MSWORD startup folder. Tested this on a few secretary pc's
last night, all looked good......until this morning, Friday the 13th, MSWORD
is crashing all over the place for these pc's. Each secretary that I've done
this for cannot complete a document before the dreaded crash.

My questions:

1)I created a folder "MSWORDstartup" off of the "C" drive, copied
"groupautotext.dot" into this folder, changed the startup location to point
to the path "C:\MSWORDstartup". Could it be because I have changed the
default startup location??

2)This is the first time I've worked with global templates, is this behavior
to be expected??

I had to take the global template out of the startup to allow the
secretaries to continue to work. I really don't want to give up on the
"global" template idea, it really would work for what I am trying to
accomplish, although with the behavior that I am seeing with this, the global
at this point, could not work for me.

Diane

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

I have created my first global template, allowing me to remove about 400
autotext entries from each user's normal.dot and moving these into a group
template named "groupautotext.dot". The "groupautotext.dot" has now been
copied into a MSWORD startup folder. Tested this on a few secretary pc's
last night, all looked good......until this morning, Friday the 13th, MSWORD
is crashing all over the place for these pc's. Each secretary that I've done
this for cannot complete a document before the dreaded crash.

My questions:

1)I created a folder "MSWORDstartup" off of the "C" drive, copied
"groupautotext.dot" into this folder, changed the startup location to point
to the path "C:\MSWORDstartup". Could it be because I have changed the
default startup location??

2)This is the first time I've worked with global templates, is this behavior
to be expected??

I had to take the global template out of the startup to allow the
secretaries to continue to work. I really don't want to give up on the
"global" template idea, it really would work for what I am trying to
accomplish, although with the behavior that I am seeing with this, the global
at this point, could not work for me.

What you did should not produce the behaviour you described.

You stated that as soon as you removed the "groupautotext.dot" template out
of the new startup folder (but did not change this "new" startup folder), the
crashes stopped.

This indicates that there is something wrong with the template, not the
folder assignment.

We would need to see the code you use to create the said template to see
what is wrong with it.

 

[Diane]

Jean,
There is no code, I just did a "new" template from MSWORD, saveas
groupautotext.dot. With the "organizer" I then copied my "group" autotext
entries from normal to my new template. - No code involved.

Since the problem began this morning, I have downloaded SP3 for Office 2003.
I've tested one machine with the fixes and so far all seems to work. I will
be updating other pc's throughout the morning. My only other thought,
could/should I turn off the autosave? Could that be my problem, possibly
MSWORD trying to do an autosave and with Normal.dot open and the "added"
template from my startup folder, maybe the issue would be there?? Your
thoughts on that??

Thanks for the response!!

Diane

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Jean,
There is no code, I just did a "new" template from MSWORD, saveas
groupautotext.dot. With the "organizer" I then copied my "group" autotext
entries from normal to my new template. - No code involved.

Did you specifically select "Word Template" in the "File Type" dropdown of
the "Save As" dialogue? Or did you smply add ".dot" to the name?

Is the autotext template on a network drive shared by many? I.e., did you
set the Startup folder to be on a shared drive?

Since the problem began this morning, I have downloaded SP3 for Office 2003.
I've tested one machine with the fixes and so far all seems to work. I will
be updating other pc's throughout the morning. My only other thought,
could/should I turn off the autosave? Could that be my problem, possibly
MSWORD trying to do an autosave and with Normal.dot open and the "added"
template from my startup folder, maybe the issue would be there?? Your
thoughts on that??

By AutoSave I will assume that you mean AutoRecover...
I do not think that Autorecover has anything to do with this. If Word cannot
do an AutoRecover on a tamplate because it is busy with another process, Word
simply delays the AutoRecover...

 

[Diane]

Jean,
When creating the template, I chose the "SAVEAS" option from the dialogue
box.
Also, the "groupautotext.dot" template is saved on each user's local drive.
There is a login scrip that will run to copy down any needed updates from the
server.

I have updated several pc's with Office fixes and it seems that this has
fixed the issue....so far, since Office 2003 SP3 seems to fix my issue--I
hope??
Diane