Mysterious changes to Normal.dot in Word 2003

H

Howard Kaikow

Over the years, there have been numerous postings complaining about
receiving a message that Normal.dot has changed, when nothing has been done
to cause such a change.

In my case, since I have deceived myself into believing that I know a bit
about Word VBA, I keep tight control of my Word templates.

Normal.dot is set to Read-Only, except when I fell like doing something to
it.
I had not changed the template since 16 Nov 2003.
I have two global templates, the last change was 20 March 2004.

On 2 April 2004, I was editing Word documents and did not receive the
changed Normal.dot message.

Today, I opened, and immediately closed, Word, and got the nefarious
message. So something has occurred since 2 April 2004.

Normal.dot was still read-only.

So I decided to recreate Normal.dot as follows:

1. Renamed the current Normal as OldNormal.
2. Copied NormalCleanNoAutoText2003.dot to Normal.dot.
3. Started Word and used the Organizer to copy macros, styles, autotext and
toolbars from OldNormal to the new Normal.

Whilst doing this copying, I noticed that OldNormal had a blank (or null)
autotext entry as the first autotext entry.
I did not create that entry.
It would seem that is just the type of entry that might get created if there
were some bug in Word.

Has anybody seen this before?

Tonight, I'll try to remember to run a full auntie virus scan, as I guess
some playful virus could remove the read-only setting, add the spurious
autotext entry and then restore the read-only setting, but I doubt this.
 
W

Word Heretic

G'day "Howard Kaikow" <[email protected]>,

Word REALLY wants to have this template. So much so, I always leave
nothing in it and certainly NEVER set it to read only. Tis the only
safe way. Its the default storage location for many settings.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


Howard Kaikow reckoned:
 

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