Word cannot save changes to the global template

[asj]

Hi

Using Office 2003, and when you close word all our users are receiving the
message 'Word cannot save changesto the global template because it was opened
with read-only access. Do you want to save changes in a template with a
different name?' This has only just happened since we restored a copy of
normal.dot, whci hwe had to do after our previous copy was modified.

Have gone through Word onling article HA011514521033 and none of the
mentioned solutions seem to solve the problem. Is there anything else I can
try to remove this message?

Regards

asj

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If you restored Normal.dot from a CD, it was set as Read Only while on the
CD, and that attribute was carried over when you copied it to the local
computer(s). Use Windows Explorer to remove the read-only attribute.

It also sounds like you have multiple users sharing a single copy of
Normal.dot. If that's the case, Word is NOT designed to be used that way.
Each individual's personalized formatting settings, autotext entries, and a
number of other features are supposed to be stored there. Word's working
correctly depends on each user having their own Normal.dot, and Normal.dot
not being set to read only.

If there are formats to be shared, that can be done via the Workgroup
templates feature.

 

[asj]

Hi

Thanks for your reply, Have already taken removed the Read only attribute,
but this still does not seem to have cleared the fault, is it becasue
obviously users are still using the template?

The user do not save any personal settings i.e. autotext to this template,
we use a seperate .dot for this that we call personal which user save
personal settings to.

All out copy of normal.dot has on it is specially written macros that
perform various tasks when a user presses a key combination I.e. Alt and L
brings up a page that has been formatted to type letters and pull through
clients data from our practice management system.

asj

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Whoever set things up that way is not sufficiently familiar with how Word is
designed to work. Clearly, this is at least in part why you're encountering
problems. Normal.dot is designed to be personal. There are other and better
methods for sharing/enforcing uniformity and distributing common tools.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[asj]

I see what you are saying, however its always worked in the past. The
template was written in 1999 before I started at this firm, and its never
been an issue until now, for some reason the template was amended and some of
the settings withing it were effected so various operations wouldn't run
correctly, so luckily keeping a copy else were we copied that into the global
location which on our file server, were it has always been held (normal.dot).

 

[Graham Mayor]

I am surprised you have managed to get away with this cock-up for as long as
you have. You cannot share the Normal.dot file among multiple users in Word
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811468
You can share global templates and document templates, but normal.dot is an
essential user only file and should be left as such.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[asj]

Thats from what I understand, was the whole point in having the two templates
which we use.

One that allows the functins we have in Word so that you can do various key
combinations that run various macro's for example, you press Alt+L you gett a
letter template, or you press Alt+P and you get a print out of a document
using various printer settings so the user doesn't have to set them everytime
(Normal.dot modified) and then another template tha acts as normal, which is
basiclly a copy of normal before any modifcations were made (personal.dot)
which is stored in the users on own user folder.

Seeing that this would appear to be a bad way of doing things here, is there
another way within word that would allow us to have the functions that we use
without having to use normal.dot as we do, causing less problems and use it
for waht it was intended for?

asj

 

[Graham Mayor]

See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/macrosvba/DistributeMacros.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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