Trick question, how to rename a template

[George]

Am using Office XP and Word XP (2002), also just got the Office 2003
upgrade, but haven't installed.



I created some templates (of format filename.dot). When I click on
File>New. all of MS WORD's pre-defined templates have CLEAN names like
"Professional Resume" or "Contemporary Fax", but MY templates all have a
sloppy "dot" extension. like "ShippingLabel.dot".



How can MY filenames be trimmed to just "ShippingLabel" or at least display
that way? By the way, it's not possible to simply drop the "dot".because
then it quits showing up at all when you click File>New. And, if you go in
properties and change the document "title", that doesn't make any difference
either.



Thanks,

Lost in Word

 

[Jay Freedman]

Am using Office XP and Word XP (2002), also just got the Office 2003
upgrade, but haven't installed.

I created some templates (of format filename.dot). When I click on
File>New. all of MS WORD's pre-defined templates have CLEAN names like
"Professional Resume" or "Contemporary Fax", but MY templates all
have a sloppy "dot" extension. like "ShippingLabel.dot".

How can MY filenames be trimmed to just "ShippingLabel" or at least
display that way? By the way, it's not possible to simply drop the
"dot".because then it quits showing up at all when you click
File>New. And, if you go in properties and change the document
"title", that doesn't make any difference either.

Hi George,

Yep, it's a trick question.

The pre-defined templates' names are known to the Word program, and it does
some fancy internal processing to drop the extensions for those. That
processing is not available for any other templates.

You can suppress the display of extensions for most files throughout
Windows, by opening Windows Explorer, going to Tools > Folder Options >
View, and checking the box for "Hide file extensions for known file types".
This affects not just Explorer but all File > New, Open, and Save As dialogs
everywhere. It's all or nothing -- either you lose .dot, .doc, .exe, .bat,
and dozens of other extensions, or you keep them all.

This may look nice and "clean" to you, but I consider it a hazard. Most
importantly, you can't see the extensions of the enticing viruses and worms
that are really executable files masquerading as innocent documents, hoping
you'll click them without thinking. Less menacingly, you'll also have a hard
time distinguishing documents from templates because their icons are nearly
identical.

My advice is to live with it, and if possible learn to like it. There really
is a reason for file extensions.