normal.dot being changed when a document is opened into Word

[Ronald Dodge]

WINXPPRO, SP2
WORD2002, SP3

I opened up a document from an email which has no macros or anything of the
like in it. I know the rules of documents, and I have my default page setup
set a certain way for a reason. Why should someone else's document change
my pagesetup via the normal.dot document when it opens up on my computer?

When I was first in college, it was to be 1 inch margins around. Since that
time, it's seems to me at least the side margins has been relaxed to be 0.5
inch margins, but yet, Word is by default set to 1.25 inch side margins.
Someone else has created a document using the default margin, emailed it to
others, and I know at least on my system, it has reverted my default
settings from what I had it to the settings in the document that was opened.
How can I prevent this from happening?

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Your defaults apply only to documents you create. I hope you aren't
expecting these to apply to external documents you open? Are you saying that
just opening a document with different margins changes the margin settings
in new documents you create thereafter?

 

[Ronald Dodge]

Yes, I am saying just that.

After I opened the document from the other user, I got a message stating
specifically that the normal.dot file has been changed. There wasn't even
an option if I wanted it to update or save the file.

I closed out of Word, reopened Word, then when it created the new document,
it had the same margins as the document that I had opened earlier that
changed the normal.dot file.

As I stated, I don't want this sort of behavior.

Thanks,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, the first thing you should do is make sure that the box for "Prompt to
save Normal template" is checked on the Save tab of Tools | Options. This
will prevent Normal.dot from being changed without your permission.

 

[Ronald Dodge]

That's a start, but what about preventing other documents from even
attempting to changing this file when those documents are opened? While I
may be tech savy, I could also see other users not thinking about it and
quite possibly click on "Yes" only to realize later on that they didn't want
to do that.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, the bottom line is that this is not normal behavior, and there must be
something bizarre about the documents that are doing this. You say that they
don't contain any macros. Does Word contain any macros at all that you don't
recognize or understand? What you might specifically look for would be an
AutoOpen or AutoClose macro.

 

[Ronald Dodge]

When I open up the document, I go to the VBA side of Word to verify the
claim.

There is nothing in any of the macros other than when I click on the
"ThisDocument" under the documents "VBAProjects,Objects", it does put in the
line "Explicit Option". However, that line is put in cause of the option
that I have set within the VBA environment to force explicit declarations of
*ALL* variables.

The only other item I see, each word document is set to reference the normal
document. I do explicitly use references when I work in VBA, but that's
mostly either in Access or Excel, not in Word.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I was suggesting that you look in Tools | Macro | Macros.

 

[Ronald Dodge]

Well nothing in there either, but either way, I can generally tell if
there's macros involved. The only thing in the list of macros are dealing
with word commands.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm out of ideas. All I can say is that this behavior is not normal.

 

[Ronald Dodge]

Thank you for trying to help me out.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Dodge, Jr.
Master MOUS 2000