Project Galley queries? (MS Word, Office 2001, OS 9.2)

[AES/newspost]

Couple of queries re MS Word from Office 2001 on Mac OS 9.2:

1) Where is Project Gallery located, and how can one change its
defaults?

My situation: When I open Word, Project Gallery opens and the Category
list down the left side shows the following items:

Categories
-------------
Blank Documents
My Templates
Business Forms
Home Essentials
Labels
-- etc --

Various templates and Wizards (for PPT and Excel as well as Word) show
in the main window. But the Word templates that I want are in the "My
Templates" folder, which I created and which is in the MS Office
templates folder. So I have to do another click on the My Templates
category to get to the templates I want.

A Sherlock search reveals no folder called "Blank Documents" anywhere on
my hard disk, so I can't put my templates into it (and also shows no
item on the HD called "Project Gallery"). The Help message for "Project
Gallery" is unhelpful.

2) And as a secondary minor mystery, the "Templates" folder in the MS
Office folder contains all the additional folders that appear beneath
Blank Documents in the Category list, arranged in proper alphabetical
order -- yet "My Templates" somehow gets promoted to the next to the top
position in the Category list, as shown above. What causes that?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Siegman,

See responses in-line.

Couple of queries re MS Word from Office 2001 on Mac OS 9.2:

1) Where is Project Gallery located, and how can one change its
defaults?

The Project Gallery is a construct that holds templates. As far as I know,
it isn't accessible, at least not in the way you want to access it.

My situation: When I open Word, Project Gallery opens and the Category
list down the left side shows the following items:

Categories
-------------
Blank Documents
My Templates
Business Forms
Home Essentials
Labels
-- etc --

Various templates and Wizards (for PPT and Excel as well as Word) show
in the main window. But the Word templates that I want are in the "My
Templates" folder, which I created and which is in the MS Office
templates folder. So I have to do another click on the My Templates
category to get to the templates I want.

Yes. That's how it works. Your custom templates are stored in My Templates
by default. You can't change that and there is no other way to create
documents based on them except via the Project Gallery.

If you navigate to your My Templates folder in the Finder, open one of your
templates and do a Save As, you will end up with another template. There is
no way to create a document from a template in the Finder. You have to use
the PG.

A Sherlock search reveals no folder called "Blank Documents" anywhere on
my hard disk, so I can't put my templates into it (and also shows no
item on the HD called "Project Gallery"). The Help message for "Project
Gallery" is unhelpful.

"Blank Documents" isn't a folder. It's a way to create various Office
documents. You could be in Word looking at the Project Gallery and by
selecting the Task icon and clicking New, you would open a new Task window
in Entourage, for instance.

I never use the PG myself except to open my custom templates so I have it
shut off in Preferences> General. Then I use the File menu or keyboard
shortcut to open it when needed.

2) And as a secondary minor mystery, the "Templates" folder in the MS
Office folder contains all the additional folders that appear beneath
Blank Documents in the Category list, arranged in proper alphabetical
order -- yet "My Templates" somehow gets promoted to the next to the top
position in the Category list, as shown above. What causes that?

The assumption is that what's most important to the user is access to his
own custom templates, which are stored in My Templates. That's why it's
always the first actual folder in the list.

Hope this helps a little. I don't like the PG myself, but that's how they
built it. You can send feedback to MS here (they're not developing Office
2001 anymore but the behavior is the same in Office 2004):
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp>

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[JE McGimpsey]

A Sherlock search reveals no folder called "Blank Documents" anywhere on
my hard disk, so I can't put my templates into it (and also shows no
item on the HD called "Project Gallery"). The Help message for "Project
Gallery" is unhelpful.

If you change your User Templates folder location, you templates will
show up in the "Blank" category.

I'd suggest you put your templates in a folder (say, "Templates") in
your Microsoft User Data (MUD) folder.

Choose Preferences/File Locations. Select User Templates and click
Modify. Navigate to your "Templates" folder and click Choose.

The Project Gallery will now show any templates in "Templates" in the
Blank category.