Unwanted new My Templates folder

[Jacques]

My Preferences are set up so that the default location for user
templates is the default, i.e. ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates/My Templates. But, when I try to save a document as a
template, Word creates *another* My Templates folder (i.e.
~/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Templates/My Templates/My
Templates) and offers me this new folder as the default. Why does it do
this, and is it possible to stop it?

Thanks,

Jacques

 

[CyberTaz]

The location should be specified as ,,,Templates: , not My Templates. Word
is recreating it thinking it isn't there.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Jacques]

Yes, it's possible to stop it. You have set the preference one level too
low.

Set it to ~/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Templates/

Word thinks of the folders as "numbers" so it can localise the names. It
wants the "Microsoft" templates on Level 1. Any Microsoft templates you
edit will be saved back to level 2 ("My Templates"). The idea is that you
don't overwrite the original so you can always get back to it.

Personally, I still all of mine in the Microsoft User Data folder along with
the Normal template, so I can easily back them all up together.

Aha - thanks. So, when Word says that this is where you set the location
for your templates, what it actually means is that this is where you set
the location in which Word will create a folder for your templates? Hmm.

I will take your tip about keeping my templates in the Microsoft User
Data folder instead. I see that Clive Huggan gives the same advice. But
he says you need to put an alias in ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates, pointing to the new location. Why is this necessary, if
you specify the new location in Word's Preferences?

Jacques

 

[Jacques]

Thanks John, that's really helpful. (I don't recall seeing this
explained in the Help files, or the Missing Manual.) So, if you wanted
to use the default templates as well as some of your own, would you need
to ensure that My Templates is a sub-folder of Templates? In other
words, assuming you wanted to keep My Templates somewhere in the
Microsoft User Data folder, would you need to copy Templates to the
Microsoft User Data folder as well?

Also, do you have to ensure that you don't have a template with the same
name in two different sub-folders of whatever folder you specify under
User Templates? If you did have templates with the same name, how would
Word know which one to use?

(I'm not only struggling with the transition from PC to Mac, but I never
really got the hang of Word 97. I'm a Word 6 man at heart. I kind of
understood Word 6. Kind of.)

 

[Phillip Jones]

Your not alone I liked the layout of Word .6.0.a for Mac and Excel
5.0.1a for Mac.

Word 6 had a feature in it that
I still can not duplicate on any after.

click on the paragraph symbol

at beginning of each paragraph was a little black box.

double click on it would save the paragraph formatting.

I could change for matting of any paragraph consecutive or not by simply
clicking one time on the little black rectangle in front of given
paragraph.

this was an advantage to me if I wanted to decrease the white space in
between paragraph of a set of Bylaws I had. I could change the size in
the first then double click on the square and click on each succeeding
on to the end of the Document.

I've never been able to duplicate that since. I actually got use to the
PC Style look and feel of the main menu. Although it give me the willies
at first thinking I had cranked up a Windows PC.

Thanks John, that's really helpful. (I don't recall seeing this
explained in the Help files, or the Missing Manual.) So, if you wanted
to use the default templates as well as some of your own, would you need
to ensure that My Templates is a sub-folder of Templates? In other
words, assuming you wanted to keep My Templates somewhere in the
Microsoft User Data folder, would you need to copy Templates to the
Microsoft User Data folder as well?

Also, do you have to ensure that you don't have a template with the same
name in two different sub-folders of whatever folder you specify under
User Templates? If you did have templates with the same name, how would
Word know which one to use?

(I'm not only struggling with the transition from PC to Mac, but I never
really got the hang of Word 97. I'm a Word 6 man at heart. I kind of
understood Word 6. Kind of.)

Hi Jacques:

Sort of... I got confused too.

When you set a location for templates, that's exactly what you are doing.
That's where Word will look for all templates.

Within that location, Word will look for subfolders. If the template it
needs is in a subfolder, it will use that. If not, it will look in the
folder above and use the one that is there.

This enables you to customise the default Microsoft templates and keep the
originals unchanged. Word looks first in My Templates, if a template is
there it's a customised version and Word uses that. If not, it looks UP a
level and uses the default template.

This is an added function on the Mac that is not on the PC. On the PC, if
you customise a default template, that's it, you've lost the original and
you have to reinstall it from your Office disk if you want it back. So the
PC does not have "My Templates" within "Templates".

If you do a lot of customising (as I do) then you probably won't have
anything in your "My Templates" folder, simply because you will explicitly
place the templates where you want them (I have folders within "Templates"
for each customer...)

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yes, it's possible to stop it. You have set the preference one level too
low.

Set it to ~/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Templates/

Word thinks of the folders as "numbers" so it can localise the names. It
wants the "Microsoft" templates on Level 1. Any Microsoft templates you
edit will be saved back to level 2 ("My Templates"). The idea is that you
don't overwrite the original so you can always get back to it.

Personally, I still all of mine in the Microsoft User Data folder along
with
the Normal template, so I can easily back them all up together.
Aha - thanks. So, when Word says that this is where you set the location
for your templates, what it actually means is that this is where you set
the location in which Word will create a folder for your templates? Hmm.

I will take your tip about keeping my templates in the Microsoft User
Data folder instead. I see that Clive Huggan gives the same advice. But
he says you need to put an alias in ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates, pointing to the new location. Why is this necessary, if
you specify the new location in Word's Preferences?

Jacques

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[Paul Berkowitz]

Aha - thanks. So, when Word says that this is where you set the location
for your templates, what it actually means is that this is where you set
the location in which Word will create a folder for your templates? Hmm.

The reason for that is that templates stored "loose" in the Templates folder
cannot be seen by the Project Gallery and therefore cannot be used to create
documents. They need to be in subfolders (except for Normal). So Word
creates a "My Templates" subfolder for templates you're going to _make_ in
Word, to be saved there by default. But you can actually save them to any
other folder you wish. You can also _move_ other subfolders full of
templates to the Templates folder. You can also keep such subfolders (or
even the whole Templates folder) somewhere safer within your user folder,
like John does (MUD folder inside ~/Documents) and drag an alias to the
default location.

I will take your tip about keeping my templates in the Microsoft User
Data folder instead. I see that Clive Huggan gives the same advice. But
he says you need to put an alias in ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates, pointing to the new location. Why is this necessary, if
you specify the new location in Word's Preferences?

You don't have to. You can do either one or the other.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jacques:

So, if you wanted
to use the default templates as well as some of your own, would you need
to ensure that My Templates is a sub-folder of Templates?

No. You would need to ensure that YOUR templates do not have the same names
as any of the default templates. If they do, Word will use the one it finds
in the lowest-level folder and ignore the higher ones (as Paul points out,
you won't be able to see them at all in Project Gallery, and Project Gallery
is the only way to create new from template in Word Mac).

words, assuming you wanted to keep My Templates somewhere in the
Microsoft User Data folder, would you need to copy Templates to the
Microsoft User Data folder as well?

You can place Templates wherever you like (you set the path in
Word>Preferences>File Locations) but wherever you place it, My Templates
must be in it

You can have two template locations: set the other with
Word>Preferences>File Locations>Workgroup Templates.

Project Gallery can't see templates any other place.

Also, do you have to ensure that you don't have a template with the same
name in two different sub-folders of whatever folder you specify under
User Templates? If you did have templates with the same name, how would
Word know which one to use?

Hint: I suggest that you ensure template names are unique across the
system, otherwise you will live in REALLY interesting times

Effectively, the "Name" of a template is everything that starts with
"MacHD:....: and ends in ".dot". Except for Normal template, which must NOT
have a ".dot" extension (it's a bug...)

So Word will know what it is doing. But *my* experience is that the user
won't

You liked the nice simple structure in Word 6, right? Let's not complicate
our lives just right this minute Word will attach the "closest"
template it finds with the name it's looking for. There's a six-level
hierarchy involved in the hunt. This can become seriously complicated.

Cheers

Hi Jacques:

Sort of... I got confused too.

When you set a location for templates, that's exactly what you are doing.
That's where Word will look for all templates.

Within that location, Word will look for subfolders. If the template it
needs is in a subfolder, it will use that. If not, it will look in the
folder above and use the one that is there.

This enables you to customise the default Microsoft templates and keep the
originals unchanged. Word looks first in My Templates, if a template is
there it's a customised version and Word uses that. If not, it looks UP a
level and uses the default template.

This is an added function on the Mac that is not on the PC. On the PC, if
you customise a default template, that's it, you've lost the original and
you have to reinstall it from your Office disk if you want it back. So the
PC does not have "My Templates" within "Templates".

If you do a lot of customising (as I do) then you probably won't have
anything in your "My Templates" folder, simply because you will explicitly
place the templates where you want them (I have folders within "Templates"
for each customer...)

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yes, it's possible to stop it. You have set the preference one level too
low.

Set it to ~/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Templates/

Word thinks of the folders as "numbers" so it can localise the names. It
wants the "Microsoft" templates on Level 1. Any Microsoft templates you
edit will be saved back to level 2 ("My Templates"). The idea is that you
don't overwrite the original so you can always get back to it.

Personally, I still all of mine in the Microsoft User Data folder along
with
the Normal template, so I can easily back them all up together.

Aha - thanks. So, when Word says that this is where you set the location
for your templates, what it actually means is that this is where you set
the location in which Word will create a folder for your templates? Hmm.

I will take your tip about keeping my templates in the Microsoft User
Data folder instead. I see that Clive Huggan gives the same advice. But
he says you need to put an alias in ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates, pointing to the new location. Why is this necessary, if
you specify the new location in Word's Preferences?

Jacques

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Jacques]

Thanks John. I like simplicity (as long as I can work *exactly* the way
I want), and at present I only need one or two document templates
anyway. I was just curious to know how it would work if you had (e.g)
templates for the same document but customized for different customers.
Perhaps you include the customer's name in the template name, as well as
keeping each customer's templates in a separate folder?

Jacques

Hi Jacques:

So, if you wanted
to use the default templates as well as some of your own, would you need
to ensure that My Templates is a sub-folder of Templates?

No. You would need to ensure that YOUR templates do not have the same names
as any of the default templates. If they do, Word will use the one it finds
in the lowest-level folder and ignore the higher ones (as Paul points out,
you won't be able to see them at all in Project Gallery, and Project Gallery
is the only way to create new from template in Word Mac).

words, assuming you wanted to keep My Templates somewhere in the
Microsoft User Data folder, would you need to copy Templates to the
Microsoft User Data folder as well?

You can place Templates wherever you like (you set the path in
Word>Preferences>File Locations) but wherever you place it, My Templates
must be in it

You can have two template locations: set the other with
Word>Preferences>File Locations>Workgroup Templates.

Project Gallery can't see templates any other place.

Also, do you have to ensure that you don't have a template with the same
name in two different sub-folders of whatever folder you specify under
User Templates? If you did have templates with the same name, how would
Word know which one to use?

Hint: I suggest that you ensure template names are unique across the
system, otherwise you will live in REALLY interesting times

Effectively, the "Name" of a template is everything that starts with
"MacHD:....: and ends in ".dot". Except for Normal template, which must NOT
have a ".dot" extension (it's a bug...)

So Word will know what it is doing. But *my* experience is that the user
won't

You liked the nice simple structure in Word 6, right? Let's not complicate
our lives just right this minute Word will attach the "closest"
template it finds with the name it's looking for. There's a six-level
hierarchy involved in the hunt. This can become seriously complicated.

Cheers

Hi Jacques:

Sort of... I got confused too.

When you set a location for templates, that's exactly what you are doing.
That's where Word will look for all templates.

Within that location, Word will look for subfolders. If the template it
needs is in a subfolder, it will use that. If not, it will look in the
folder above and use the one that is there.

This enables you to customise the default Microsoft templates and keep the
originals unchanged. Word looks first in My Templates, if a template is
there it's a customised version and Word uses that. If not, it looks UP a
level and uses the default template.

This is an added function on the Mac that is not on the PC. On the PC, if
you customise a default template, that's it, you've lost the original and
you have to reinstall it from your Office disk if you want it back. So
the
PC does not have "My Templates" within "Templates".

If you do a lot of customising (as I do) then you probably won't have
anything in your "My Templates" folder, simply because you will explicitly
place the templates where you want them (I have folders within "Templates"
for each customer...)

On 8/9/06 8:12 PM, in article (e-mail address removed),

"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" <[email protected]>
wrote:

Yes, it's possible to stop it. You have set the preference one level
too
low.

Set it to ~/Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Templates/

Word thinks of the folders as "numbers" so it can localise the names.
It
wants the "Microsoft" templates on Level 1. Any Microsoft templates you
edit will be saved back to level 2 ("My Templates"). The idea is that
you
don't overwrite the original so you can always get back to it.

Personally, I still all of mine in the Microsoft User Data folder along
with
the Normal template, so I can easily back them all up together.

Aha - thanks. So, when Word says that this is where you set the location
for your templates, what it actually means is that this is where you set
the location in which Word will create a folder for your templates? Hmm.

I will take your tip about keeping my templates in the Microsoft User
Data folder instead. I see that Clive Huggan gives the same advice. But
he says you need to put an alias in ~/Applications/Microsoft Office
2004/Templates, pointing to the new location. Why is this necessary, if
you specify the new location in Word's Preferences?

Jacques