Office 2007 normal.dot on Vista

[Russ Green]

I have office 2007 deployed in my domain and using group policy to point
user and workgroup template paths to a read only folder on the domain
server.....no problems with my XP clients but I've just added a Vista client
and everytime Word closes it tries to update normal.dotm (I don't have
normal.dotm only normal.dot) in the shared path.

This obviously generates an series of dialog boxes as the path is read only.

How do I solve this?

Russ

 

[gls858]

I have office 2007 deployed in my domain and using group policy to point
user and workgroup template paths to a read only folder on the domain
server.....no problems with my XP clients but I've just added a Vista client
and everytime Word closes it tries to update normal.dotm (I don't have
normal.dotm only normal.dot) in the shared path.

This obviously generates an series of dialog boxes as the path is read only.

How do I solve this?

Russ

Don't know if this will work or not but you might try going into options
and setting the default save format to 97-2003 format.

gls858

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Word 2007 is designed to create Normal.dotm to maintain/save user
customizations/styles/etc. When Normal.dotm does not exist, Word 2007 load
an available Normal.dot, but is genetically disposed to use what it can from
Normal.dot to create Normal.dotm either when Save All is issued from within
Word, or upon exiting.

Word depends upon being able to do this, and it will continue until
normal.dotm exists.

I can appreciate wanting to lock things down so users can't change
Normal.dotm, but that's not the way Word is designed to work.

The only work-around I can see would be to go ahead and create Normal.dotm
and put it into your read-only folder. I wouldn't want to be one of your
users, though. Without the ability to customize Word 2007, it would be
unbearable as a work tool, and I wouldn't use it.

Note that there is a mechanism for distributing group styles via template,
etc., but it's in using the Workgroup Templates folder (not the User
Templates folder), and/or using global .dot, .dotx, or .dotm files.

 

[Tim]

Hi Herb,

Just wondering...isn't normal.dotm just for macro-enabled templates and
normal.dotx the "new" normal.dot? Maybe I'm missing something...

Tim

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

In some of the early betas, Word would create Normal.dotx, however, I've
never seen the released version do it. Yes, .dotm does mean macro-enabled.
You can disable macros in other ways, however (Word Options - Trust Center -
Macros). The only Normal.dotx files I've seen are those that were left-over
from a beta, or which were created deliberately (such as I just did) for
experimental purposes.

Even if you create Normal.dotx and put it into the templates folder, Word
will ignore it, and will continue to create Normal.dotm upon exit. Word 2007
is designed to load only Normal.dotm or Normal.dot when started, and to
automatically save only Normal.dotm automatically upon exit. (You can, of
course, associate Normal.dot or any other .dot file with any given document,
and make changes to it... but this is apart from Word 2007's dependency upon
Normal.dotm.)

This is based upon observation and confirmation from Microsoft when I asked
during the beta. If someone else knows of a registry kludge to get Word 2007
to use a normal.dotx file... I've not heard of it. But, this is Word... so,
that's no guarantee. ;-)

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Russ Green]

Thanks for the reply herb....

So I'll let users update their own copy of normal.dotm but not the version
in the workgroup folder.

I have styles in templates anyway so that's not too bad I suppose.

Thanks