Normal.dot - Clearing Tabs

[MarieC]

A request for advice: how do you clear tab settings that
have been previously set in normal.dot? My previous
attempts have included opening into Word from normal.dot,
opening Format|Tabs and clearing all, saving changes and
exiting. But when I re-enter Word, the tabs are all there
again. Is there a default button somewhere that I am
missing?

For those who answered my previous post about this
office's network usage of normal.dot, I am also wondering
if this is a problem arising because of that.

Cheers
MarieC

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Tab settings are part of paragraph styles. For a start, you probably need to
modify the Normal style (if it contains tab settings), then check the box
for "Add to template" so your changes will be saved to Normal.dot. For more,
see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CustomizeNormalTemplate.htm

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Probably also worth noting that if a paragraph doesn't have tab stops (or
runs out of stops) then Word uses the 'default tab stops' for the document.
Those can be set from the Tabs dialog you get from Format > Tabs (but
obviously not from the one you get from the Modify Style dialog).

The default tab stops can't be 'deleted' but if you change the setting to 0
they have no effect (any tab characters in the text just pile up invisibly).
There's no option to save back to Normal.dot as far as I can see, so you'd
have to open Normal.dot itself to make that change I think.

On the shared Normal.dot - I wouldn't like to guess what effect this will
have, but it's quite possible that a) your 'Add to template' changes won't
actually be saved because Normal never gets closed or that b) even if your
settings do get saved someone else will overwrite. Getting local Normal.dots
really is the top priority here

--
Margaret Aldis - Microsoft Word MVP
Syntagma partnership site: http://www.syntagma.co.uk
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word

 

[MarieC]

Thanks very much for your help, Margaret and Suzanne

(1) Re: The Network Normal.dot Issue...

To try things out on my machine before I attempt to
achieve implementation on everyone elses, I have set my
own normal.dot to C:drive for now. I have attached the
office-standard macros, toolbars, styles and current
autotext from the network normal.dot to my own
normal.dot. All is working fine.

The only issue preventing me from suggesting I now set
everyone up the same way is that we update the autotext
entries sometimes as much as twice or three times a week,
and it is not very viable to go around to everyone's
machine to copy them over each time this is done. Do you
know of any other techniques to handle a situation like
this?

(2) Re: The Unwanted Tab Stops

I have removed them via paragraph styles, as suggested.

I had previously tried going into the network normal.dot
directly (first getting everyone to log out of the
program so that changes could be saved), and clearing the
tab settings from within Format|Tabs. However, it seems
normal.dot will not save default settings this way.

I have not been able to change the 1.27cm default tab
setting in normal.dot either through Format|Tabs or
paragraph styles.

Your help is hugely appreciated.

Cheers
MarieC

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Replies in-line:

Thanks very much for your help, Margaret and Suzanne

(1) Re: The Network Normal.dot Issue...

To try things out on my machine before I attempt to
achieve implementation on everyone elses, I have set my
own normal.dot to C:drive for now. I have attached the
office-standard macros, toolbars, styles and current
autotext from the network normal.dot to my own
normal.dot. All is working fine.

The only issue preventing me from suggesting I now set
everyone up the same way is that we update the autotext
entries sometimes as much as twice or three times a week,
and it is not very viable to go around to everyone's
machine to copy them over each time this is done. Do you
know of any other techniques to handle a situation like
this?

Don't put the macros etc. into Normal.dot, put them into a separate template
which you can then load as an 'global add-in'. You can make the global
template load automatically by having it in the Word startup folder
(location set via Tools > Options) - that would normally be on everyone's
own machine, but it is also possible to use a network location. Another
solution might be to use a local global file for the macros and toolbars,
and have an 'AutoExec' macro in that file load another network template for
the AutoTexts. Yet another way is to use local copies, updated each day by
login script.

See http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/macrosvba/DistributeMacros.htm
and http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/Customization/WhatTemplatesStore.htm

(2) Re: The Unwanted Tab Stops

I have removed them via paragraph styles, as suggested.

I had previously tried going into the network normal.dot
directly (first getting everyone to log out of the
program so that changes could be saved), and clearing the
tab settings from within Format|Tabs. However, it seems
normal.dot will not save default settings this way.

I have not been able to change the 1.27cm default tab
setting in normal.dot either through Format|Tabs or
paragraph styles.

Hmm - Microsoft think it should work Word 2000 - see

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211724

and I've just tested in Word 2002 and it's fine there too. I think this is
probably an artefact of having Normal.dot on a network location.

You do realise that these settings would only apply to new blank documents,
not to any existing documents or custom templates?

You are going to need to decide how to distribute these default settings,
however. You could start everyone off with a clean Normal.dot with your tab
settings in place, but that could get overwritten. For custom document
settings and styles it's generally better to set up custom templates and
create new documents from those, rather than default blank documents.

 

[MarieC]

Thank you so much, Margaret. That is very comprehensive.
I will get onto achieving those changes ASAP.

Cheers
MarieC