Normal Template automatically saved?

[groblewis]

Often when starting Word for X, I see a message like "Word
automatically saved changes in the Normal Template. Do you want to load
it?"

What does this mean? What should I do? I haven't deliberately changed
any templates.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Often when starting Word for X, I see a message like "Word
automatically saved changes in the Normal Template. Do you want to load
it?"

What does this mean? What should I do? I haven't deliberately changed
any templates.

Interesting....

If you change the default font, or default margins, or any style, or a
custom toolbar or keyboard shortcut, those customizations are all saved in
the Normal template, so it's not hard to be changing it frequently. And Word
has to load Normal on launch to function at all.

If you are getting the message *every* time you launch Word, then I would be
worried that there is some add-in or something making changes to Word, and
it would be good to know which one.

Otherwise, if it's just occasional, I don't *think* you need to worry about
this message--because Normal is so fundamental to Word, there are some
warnings built in to make sure you know when you are changing it. I'd never
heard of this one, though. I thought the only option was to get the warning
on quit when the changes are actually being saved to Normal, but I skipped
Word X. Perhaps someone else can speak to that?

Can you go into Word | Preferences, and under Save, see if "prompt to save
Normal template" is checked?

I wonder whether it could be an OS thing--because the Normal is stored in
the apps folder in Word X....

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Interesting....

If you change the default font, or default margins, or any style, or a
custom toolbar or keyboard shortcut, those customizations are all saved in
the Normal template, so it's not hard to be changing it frequently. And Word
has to load Normal on launch to function at all.

If you are getting the message *every* time you launch Word, then I would be
worried that there is some add-in or something making changes to Word, and
it would be good to know which one.

Otherwise, if it's just occasional, I don't *think* you need to worry about
this message--because Normal is so fundamental to Word, there are some
warnings built in to make sure you know when you are changing it. I'd never
heard of this one, though. I thought the only option was to get the warning
on quit when the changes are actually being saved to Normal, but I skipped
Word X. Perhaps someone else can speak to that?

Can you go into Word | Preferences, and under Save, see if "prompt to save
Normal template" is checked?

I wonder whether it could be an OS thing--because the Normal is stored in
the apps folder in Word X....

Nah, it's a bug. I got it approximately 17,369 times - every time I ever
used Word X. It drove me nuts. Whatever it was, they fixed it for Word 2004.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Nah, it's a bug. I got it approximately 17,369 times - every time I ever
used Word X. It drove me nuts. Whatever it was, they fixed it for Word 2004.

Are you sure? You got this dialog when *launching* Word? Like Daiya, I've
never heard of it before either.

On the other hand, getting a similar alert when quitting Word was very
common in X because Entourage would write the contents of your contacts
folder into the Normal template every few minutes. Now *that* was a bug
IMO.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
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