Templates

[Andy Smith]

Hiya,

We have a 3rd party app that as part of document generation (data is pulled
from its SQL database), it uses a central template (.dot file) to add the
company header. If we change the company header, new documents generated have
the new information.

However, if we change the central header and open a document which was
originally created using the old header, the same changes in the central
template are not visible. Is this by design, as what happens if we have 1000s
of documents and we change our company name or email address. If an old
document is opened and emailed off it will have the wrong info!

I can't imagine MS to have been this stupid!

Thanks

 

[Jay Freedman]

It *is* by design. It's explained in detail in
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/templaterelations/index.html and
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/attachtemplate/index.html.

If you want the header to update when the document is reopened, it could be
referenced in the template (and therefore in documents created from the
template) by an INCLUDETEXT field pointing to a bookmarked selection in
another document.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[Andy Smith]

OK, that's surprising.

So what do Microsoft suggest one would do if we need to change the header of
existing documents?

A fair few documents as well!

Thanks

 

[Jay Freedman]

I have no idea what Microsoft would suggest. I don't work for them (if
you're curious, see http://www.word.mvps.org/AboutMVPs/index.htm).

What the MVPs suggest is a macro to do a find&replace on all the
documents in a folder:
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm