Templates Security Problem

[Paul Moloney]

I have a situation where I have a Microsoft Word template which
is used by the company to create proposal documents. This
template resides in on a directory on a central server, and
company employees can set their Word "Workgroup Templates"
setting to this location. The template provides styles and
custom menus, toolbars, and macros. The macros perform
functions such as inserting repetitive text and inserting
fields.

Other employees, who are often offsite and use a laptop instead,
copy this template to their laptop's template directory and use
it from their instead.

Once documents are created, they are often then mailed to
outside customers.

As far as I'm aware, the behaviour that I expected from
Microsoft Word when a document from the above template is
opened is:

1. Word checks to see if the template exists in the user's
"Workgroup Templates" or "User Templates" folder.

2. If the template does exist (ie, if the user is a company employee)
then the document is displayed along with the accompanying
toolbars. (Since the template is in one of the user's
specified template location, this overrides the security
settings).

3. If the template _doesn't_ exist (i.e, if the user is a external
customer to whom the document has been sent), then the document
is displayed without toolbars or macros being loaded.


However, what I find is that a Security Warning is being displayed
to these customers because of the macros. This is unacceptable to
the company, since it suggested to basic users that the documents
may be infected.

Can anyone tell me is this expected behaviour? If so, how can
I change things to get the behaviour I want? Do I have to get
users to manually remove the template from each document
before they send it out? Or not use macros at all for documents
that will be viewed outside?

Thanks for any help,

P.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the macros are in the template and not the document, then I can't see why
users who have only the documents would be getting macro warnings any more
than they would from a document based on Normal.dot if all the macros were
stored there.

--
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.

 

[Paul Moloney]

If the macros are in the template and not the document, then I can't see why
users who have only the documents would be getting macro warnings any more
than they would from a document based on Normal.dot if all the macros were
stored there.

Hi Suzanne,

Yup, that's what I assumed! I can only presume that some
people, instead of creating a new document from the template
in the correct manner, are instead_copying_ it and editing
the copy as if it were a document. I think this would then
cause the seen behaviour?

P.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Absolutely! If the template is stored in the user templates folder, users
will find it more difficult to create a copy than to create a new document.
But never underestimate the power of clueless users! This is an educational
issue, though: instruct users that if the title bar of their unnamed,
unsaved document says Template# instead of Document#, they're doing
something wrong.

--
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.