Autotext Won’t Remember New Entries (WXP, Office XP)

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For a while now any new autotext entries I create are lost when Word closes completely, e.g., at a reboot. I’ve looked at my settings, and can’t find a reason. What happens is I enter something new, it works fine during that session, i.e., responds correctly to the F3 command, but then when I restart my computer and return to Word, it is not available. Older entries are still there, but I can’t put in new ones. I have run Office Repair, but that didn’t help.

Thanks,
Michael

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AutoText entries are stored in Normal.dot (unless you explicitly specify another template), so adding an AutoText entry should modify Normal.dot. Try the following:
– Tick the check box for “Prompt to save Normal template” in the Save tab of Tools | Options…
– Add an AutoText entry.
– Quit Word.
– Do you get the prompt shown below?

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Thanks! Now, I did that and I did not receive the prompt. Just to make sure I also closed down OL and Winword in the Processes window, but no queries. Following that thought, I went to my templates folder, and discovered that the last change made to Normal.dot is March 28th! I’m getting the sinking feeling that [once again] I have to delete normal.dot. Any less irksome suggestions?

Thanks,
Michael

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You could rename or move Normal.dot, and see if Word creates a new one. If so, you should be able to use the Organizer (from Tools | Templates and Add-Ins…) to transfer the existing AutoText entries from the old Normal.dot to the new one.
Also see Phil Rabichow’s Systematic Approach to Behavioral Problems in Word (97/2000).

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To manually force a save of Normal.dot, you can: hold one of the Shift keys, click the File menu, then click Save All. If you turned on prompting, you should get a prompt. (I believe a document or template needs to be open in order to do this.)

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I think this is a problem with Adobe Acrobat. Do you have Acrobat installed? At least with Acrobat 7, when you install Acrobat so that you can run it from w/in Word from its own toolbar (I hope I’m being clear), there’s some sort of incompatability that prevents Word from saving normal.dot. Thus your new autocorrect entries don’t get saved. There’s some thread here about the incompatibilty where I posted a solution (or more than one solution). Sorry, don’t have time to search for it right now. This exact problem gave me fits (tried all the other solutions — repair; reinstalling; deleteing normal.dot; etc.) until I found a message here from HansV re: how Acrobat fouls a lot of stuff up in Word.

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Indeed, it is Acrobat. It’s absolutely amazing to me that two of the most basic programs most of us use cause problems for each other. I now have to find out how to re-install Acrobat 7 without putting in the Word components.

Thanks,
Michael

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I don’t think you have to re-install Acrobat. Just move the Word add-in out of Word’s startup location (see Tools | Options…, File Locations tab for the path of the startup folder).

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Well, I did the whole re-install, etc. Now everything seems fine. When I re-installed I chose Custom and rejected all the connections to Office. I will add the Outlook in a bit, once I know everything is working fine. Using Acrobat to create archives of old email is, as far as I’m concerned, far and away the best method of old email archiving.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

Michael

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Hi Michael

Please find my easy guide explaining Autotext entries.

hope this helps
diana

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If one removes the pdfmaker (v6) or Office integration (v7), can one still create a pdf that has, for example, a clickable TOC? I tried this and found it to not work. Is there a way to set up Acrobat to retain these hyperlinks? Unfortunately, Adobe clearly stated that evaluation versions were not covered by their phone support so I couldn’t ask them. I’m glad I tried the eval first.

The problems I had caused me to look around and try Nitro PDF, which I liked a lot (and which doesn’t muck up Word!). It’s inexpensive and has a free trial. Scansoft also has a similar low-cost alternative, but no free trial.

Kim

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No need to uninstall Acrobat and reinstall w/o the addin. Instead, if you’re using Acrobat 6, just find pdfmaker.dot in yoru startup folder and delete it. If you’re using Acrobat 7, You need use Regedit and find the key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWordAddinsPDFMaker.OfficeAddin]

and change the subkey called “LoadBehavior” from a value of 3 to 0.”

And you’re right, it IS amazing. I’ll bet that way over 50% of all .pdf files that aren’t created by a scanner are created by converting a Word doc. That Adobe doesn’t seem to care about fouling up Word is irritating to say the least.

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