Office 2007 sharing Autotext between Word and Outlook

[Jerre]

I have autotext that was created in a normal template in a previous version
of Word. It was available in Word and in Outlook. We've upgraded to Office
2007, and the autotext is now in a .dot file in the user's profile, Appl
Data, MS, Document Building Blocks folder, and it works in Word 2007. How
can I use it also in Outlook 2007? I'd like to share the same autotext for
both applictions. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Vinod Lewis]

1. Make sure all your office applications are closed
2. Type %appdata% in the run box.
3. open Microsoft folder and then the templates folder.
4. Rename "Normalemail.dotm" to something like test.dotm
5. click back button and open Document building blocks folder
6. open 1033 folder
7. Right click and open "Building Blocks.dotx" (as by default all the auto
text entry is saved in this file, if your user has saved them to some other
file, so open that file and follow the next steps).
8. Save the file as "normalemail.dotm" to the templates folder(application
data\microsoft\templates)
9. open outlook and type the first 4 letters of the defined auto text entry
and press F3

Hope this helps

 

[Jerre]

Thanks, that is helpful. I have encountered two problems with this method.

First, my autotext is still not visible in Outlook until I convert it to
quickparts. Am I doing something wrong? Must autotext be converted to
quickparts in order for Outlook to use it?

Second, it appears that Outlook and Word do not literally "share" the file.
When I add new items, it seems I must add them to building blocks and then to
normalemail. In prior versions, all autotext created in Word was available
in Outlook (with Word as email editor) through the normal template.

What am I missing here? Thanks again for your help.

Jerre

 

[Vinod Lewis]

Word is no longer the default email editor in 2007, so it will not use the
normal template. Instead it uses the normalemail.dotm.

When you create auto text entries in word 2007, it saves those auto text
entries to Buildingblocks.dotx file. Further before saving the auto text you
need to change the gallery to Auto text instead of quick parts.

Now the catch is, as outlook uses normalemail.dotm, we need to save /
transfer autotext entries to this file. which is not possible using the
normal procedure. So as we know that if you save auto text entries in word it
save to Buildingblocks.dotx file, that's why we will open the
Buildingblocks.dotx file and save it as normalemail.dotm.

After this operation, if you create auto text entry in word. you will have
to repeat the whole process of saving the Buildingblocks.dotx file as
normalemail.dotm, so that you can use the new autotext in outlook.

Screen tip in office 2007 is not visible, so you need to type the first 4
characters that you define for auto text while creating them and press F3.

The steps that i have mentioned should resolve your problem