Trouble with AutoText formatting!! Help!

[SELIGMAN MAINE]

Greetings...
We have one user that is responsible for all the auto text coding that our
Correspondence group uses. Some of these autotexts are 2 pages in length and
some are simply one line. This user will update, add, change, etc.. and when
finished notify our IT group... we copy the normal.dot from his PC and copy
to network. It is then pushed out via logon script, so each day all users
have access to the latest autotext.

Recently (as this file the template has grown from 700k to almost 1mb) we
are seeing inconsistent formatting when other users pull up the codes. The
formatting may change something that should not be bold to bold... italics
where none where saved and bullets that do not line up. Yet the next user
may have different results and be able to pull up the autotext with all the
formatting being the way the author had saved it. In fact at times the
person that does the codes.. will have issues on a subsequent attempt to
bring up a code he just changed.

I do not have to ask if you understand how much of a pain it is for these
users to have to consistently reformat all of this text each time they get to
use it. When at other moments, they can cruise along with no trouble at all!

I have seen a few posts speaking towards the size of template causing
problems.. but one post mentioned the max being 32mb, which we are not even
close to even approaching at this time.

Can anyone explain this formatting trouble and suggest a work around?
Should a customized template be used for this much auto text? Or should the
normal.dot do the job just the same.

Thank you in advance for even reading through my post.. and for any input
you may have!

Thank you,
Matthew Jones

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Do not push normal.dot! Do not share normal.dot! Do not touch your
neighbor's normal.dot! While I am being somewhat silly in my expression, I
am very serious in the advice. There is seldom, if ever, any reason to be
changing normal.dot other than by the local user.

You can do this with a completely separate template. See
http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm for step-by-step instructions
on moving / sharing / copying / backing-up customizations including
AutoText, AutoCorrect, keyboard assignments, toolbars, macros, etc.

Your formatting is explained by the use of direct formatting in either your
AutoText entries or in the receiving documents. Do your formatting using
styles.

Things like Bold and italics are toggle characteristics in Word. So rather
than make certain text bold, direct formatting will change it to "have the
opposite bold characteristic from the underlying style." This means that if
you take text which has been marked as bold and plunk it down in a document
where the underlying style is already set as bold, your pasted text will be
non-bold.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[SELIGMAN MAINE]

Thanks for the quick reply... I was suspicious of the use of the normal.dot
and you have confirmed that. I will check out the links you suggested and
get to work on a custom template, etc...

I appreciate the help and will pass along your very direct words of advice
on the normal.dot!

Thanks again,
Matt Jones