STYLES available on NEW DOCUMENTS

[kurt]

Hello to all,

First, thanks to everyone over the past many months who
have helped me out with various questions in Word. The
MVP's are wonderful.

Second, PLEASE oh PLEASE can someone help me with this? I
have tried MANY ways to have a collection of styles
available with every NEW document FIRM WIDE in a law firm,
but to no avail. I am using Word 2002 (XP). I do NOT want
to put these styles in each user's normal.dot since I want
to be able to add new styles over time and would like to
have an EASY way to do this. In addition, I don't want to
overwrite any user's autotexts, or Toolbar customizations
on their Normal.dot. The ideal would be: Create a
template that has the styles I want to distribute to
everyone in the firm, put that template in some directory
on the network, and have each user point to it in some
way, either through startup, workgroup, or otherwise.
Then, if 2 months later, I want to add several new styles
for use with NEW documents (and even existing documents if
possible) I would simply update my template on the network
to include the new styles, and since the users would be
already pointing to the template, on a new login, they
would have the newest styles available to them. BUT NO!!
I have tried several things but nothing seems to work.

I created a firm.dot which loads from the startup
directory off of the network...this brings up for each
user many buttons on a new toolbar with automations...ie.
pleadings, fancy macros, etc. This works great. But the
styles in this firm.dot will not show on new docs.

An MVP suggested I put a template with the styles that I
want on the desktop, and instead of clicking the normal
Word icon, click the new shortcut. This DOES load the new
styles, but only for the first blank screen in Word.
Then, in clicking the New Doc button from the toolbar,
Word always goes back to using the Normal.dot.

Another MVP suggested the /t switch, but I can't get this
to work, and I think it will only load the template the
first time I go into Word, and not for the New Doc button.

I have thought about replacing the New Doc button with one
that looks like it, but in fact loads the template that I
want to load. And to ensure that the styles load for the
first blank screen when loading Word, I could replace the
Word shortcut with the shortcut for the template.

I'll do this if nothing else works, but I can't believe
there's not a way for Word 2002 to load my template, from
addins for example. I tried that too, and the styles
don't come up.

ANY HELP???

THANKS!
-Kurt

 

[Stefan Blom]

You cannot make styles globally available in an add-in,
just toolbars, macros, keyboard shortcuts, and menu
customizations. In order to access the styles of a
particular template, you must explicitly create a new
document based on that template. Perhaps the easiest
method would be to train your users to select File > New
and then pick the appropriate template?

Stefan

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Kurt

See answer to your post in (probably) customization group.

 

[Anne Pontillo]

I have done this before for clients of mine (law firms). What I do is this:
I create a template named "blank.dot". In this template, first be sure to
delete all AutoText entries (as they are already in normal.dot and will show
duplicates if left in this template). In blank.dot, make all of your file,
page setup changes (such as margins, different first page, etc.), then
create all of your styles that you want in all new documents. Save this
template to your templates directory. This template needs to be installed
on each user's machine, not on the network server. Also, your firm.dot
mentioned that is on the server should be on each user's machine in the
Startup folder.

In your firm template, (I believe you mentioned firm.dot), create the
following macro:
Sub NewBlankDocument()
Documents.Add Template:= _
Application.Options.DefaultFilePath(wdUserTemplatesPath) _
& "\Blank.dot", NewTemplate:=False, DocumentType:=0
End Sub
Assign this new macro to a button on the toolbar to insert a new doc (add a
new button, assign the macro to it, copy the icon from the new doc button
and past on this button, then delete the original button and put this one in
its place. Also, assign it to the keystroke for a new doc (I believe it is
Ctrl+N and this assignment needs to be done in the firm template which is in
the startup folder).

Next, when you open Word it creates a new document based on Normal, which
you don't want because it won't have your styles. You need to stop this
from happening. There is a startup switch for Word that will accomplish
this. Look in Word help for start (the topic is called Control what happens
when you start Microsoft Word). Follow the instructions to have Word start
with a template other than Normal. This will need to be done to all of your
shortcuts for Word on each user's computer (the desktop icon, the Start,
Programs menu, etc.).

Hope this helps
Anne P.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's not necessary (or possible) to delete the built-in AutoText entries
from a template based on Normal.dot (as they all ultimately are), as these
are not coped to new templates. See “WD2002: Styles and AutoText Are Not
Copied to New Template Based on Normal.dot” at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291441

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.