Possible to Change Existing Folders Into Templates Folders?

[cole.simonson]

Hi Folks,

Background:
We are finding that Templates solve a huge problem for us. There are
many documents are opened remotely by a third-party application and
data is fed to Word to do Mail Merges. Templates keep File-Busy
conditions from happening, so they will save the day from our Info Tech
dept getting ten calls per day for no good reason.

Here's the problem:
The applications and users all know already where to find their
respective documents. It would be great if we could change specific
existing folders into Template folders.

Please Note:
I've already mapped in Word, under Tools/Options/File Locations a
Workgroup templates to a mapped drive where we would like Word to treat
the folder and everything in it as templates, but that DID NOT WORK.
Yet, when I take one of these same documents with a '.dot' extension
and put it into the standard Templates directory of:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates
then it works fine.

But I cannot reasonably move all the needed files to this one
directory, and as I said above, changing the location of these hundreds
of files would create other headaches. SO...

Is it possible to change existing folders to be recognized by the
system as Templates folders? One example of one of these folders is
named:
W:\ocp\wpdocs\legal letters\

Thank You in Advance. The help is Greatly Appreciated! Kind Regards,

Cole

 

[Margaret Aldis]

I don't know why you were unable to point to an existing folder as the
Workgroup Templates folder - that certainly should be an option. What
exactly didn't work?

Another solution that is sometimes helpful is to make shortcuts to existing
folders of templates or model documents and add them to the User Templates
folder. These will then show up as tabs in the File > New dialog.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Tools/Options/File locations ought to work, but can be set to only one
folder at a time. If it's not working, your company may have locked the
Data key or be using System Profiles to prevent this from being changed.

In any case, try creating Windows SHORTCUT icons in the central location
that is mapped to the various folders. This should bring in all the
templates from the various folders to the dialog box.

Background:
We are finding that Templates solve a huge problem for us. There are
many documents are opened remotely by a third-party application and
data is fed to Word to do Mail Merges. Templates keep File-Busy
conditions from happening, so they will save the day from our Info Tech
dept getting ten calls per day for no good reason.

Here's the problem:
The applications and users all know already where to find their
respective documents. It would be great if we could change specific
existing folders into Template folders.

Please Note:
I've already mapped in Word, under Tools/Options/File Locations a
Workgroup templates to a mapped drive where we would like Word to treat
the folder and everything in it as templates, but that DID NOT WORK.
Yet, when I take one of these same documents with a '.dot' extension
and put it into the standard Templates directory of:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates
then it works fine.

But I cannot reasonably move all the needed files to this one
directory, and as I said above, changing the location of these hundreds
of files would create other headaches. SO...

Is it possible to change existing folders to be recognized by the
system as Templates folders? One example of one of these folders is
named:
W:\ocp\wpdocs\legal letters\

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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