Templates & mail merge

[William F. O'Neill]

Am using Word97 on WINXP.

I would like to create a document that basically serves as a template that
would be used in a mail merge. When the merge is done, then, the enduser
should be able to use SAVE AS, and give it a name, and a location. However,
I don't want the endusers to overwrite the template file(merge.dot). Once
they save their new document, then, they can edit it, but not the template.
I thought that if I created a new document(merge.dot), using the Normal.dot
template, put the data in that I wanted, and then saved it, that this could
serve as my template, and not be overwritten, but that's not the case. End
users keep forgetting to use "SAVE AS", and are constantly overwritting the
template. Any suggestions how I can accomplish my goal here.

 

[Tammy]

Hi William, It sounds like your end users are opening the actual
template and editing it, rather than creating a document based on it -
is this correct? They should be accessing the template via the "File"
menu and then "New" - this way a completely new document based on the
template is created and they can then edit that without altering the
template itself. If you're still concerned about the template being
overwritten you could make it read only as a safeguard.
Cheers,
Tammy