Word Template (Word 2007)

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Every time I open and use a Word (2007) document or create a new one, when I close it, I get a message that says that it cannot save the template …dotm, and I have to physically save it back under C:UserRon… This happens, particularly if I make changes/update styles, which I seem to have to do to get back to the standards I want every time I create/update/modify a Word doument. I do not ever remember having this hassle with any previous versions of Word and am wondering if there is a dialog box somewhere that will allow me (Word?) to just update and automatically save the new/updated normal.dotm template to wherever it is supposed to be saved. (Can someone tell me where that is?) This behaviour by Word is starting to seriously annoy me. Any help, insight, etc., that anyone would care to provide will be greatly and graciously appreciated. Thanks.

Ron M

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Ron,

The prompt to save Normal.dotm could be getting triggered if, when you are modifying styles in a document based on Normal.dotm, you’re selecting the option button for “New documents based on this template” in the Modify Style dialog.

As you say, the better way would be to modify the styles in Normal.dotm itself to your liking (or alternatively, leaving Normal.dotm alone, and creating a new template that suits your needs).

Normal.dotm is stored in your user templates location, the path to which will differ, depending on which version of Windows you are using. To see the location of your Normal.dotm, click on the Office button > Word Options > Advanced > scroll down toward the bottom, under ‘General’, and click on the File Locations, and then select ‘User Templates’ – you’ll probably see a truncated path, but if you click on the ‘Modify’ button and then click on the ‘Templates’ drop-down at the top of the Modify Location dialog, that will show you the path where your Normal.dotm is stored.

Gary

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Ron,

Normal.dotm is stored in your user templates location, the path to which will differ, depending on which version of Windows you are using. To see the location of your Normal.dotm, click on the Office button > Word Options > Advanced > scroll down toward the bottom, under ‘General’, and click on the File Locations, and then select ‘User Templates’ – you’ll probably see a truncated path, but if you click on the ‘Modify’ button and then click on the ‘Templates’ drop-down at the top of the Modify Location dialog, that will show you the path where your Normal.dotm is stored.

Gary

Gary, thanks for the instructions. I can get as far as ‘Modify’ part of the instructions, but I do not get a ‘Templates’ drop-down at the top of the “Modify Location” dialog.

As part of this, assuming I can find the ‘normal.dotm’ template, I should be able to open it and set it up the way I want it and then save it as something else(?), e.g. mynormal.dotm. The only thing I don’t know is how I get this new template to come up all the time when I open a new document – I assume it must be somewhere in the “Word Options” dialog boxes.

Regards,

Ron M

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Ron,

Sorry, my last post was unnecessarily complicated – the default paths are as follows:

By default, user templates files are stored in the following location:

* In Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003
C:Documents and Settings user name Application DataMicrosoftTemplates
* In Windows Vista
C:Users user name AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates

For more details, see the Microsoft Support article How to manage templates in 2007 Office programs. This article appears to predate Windows 7; the path is probably the same in Windows 7 as in Windows Vista (if it’s not, hopefully someone will correct me).

Once you navigate to your Normal.dotm, you can open it like any other document, and revise it as you wish.
The (probably better) alternative is to save a new template that you can customize – to do this, first open Normal.dotm, and then do a Save As, again as a .dotm file type – that should by default save the file in the same User templates location as Normal.dot. Then make whatever customizations you want to make to this new template, and save the changes.

Then, to create new documents based on it in the future, you can click on Office button > New, and you should see your new custom template name available there.

Gary

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Gary, thanks for the update. I will definitely follow up with the reference and your suggestions and see how it goes. I really don’t want to get into the business of managing templates, I simply want one with paragraph formats and formats of headings, and various lists – numbered (two or three types) and bulleted and a few more Table formats that I can access as needed. Before I retired, (Office 2003 days) I used to make all kinds of document templates for all the different types of documents that my clients aften required, but today I only need a few to handle my day-to-day business and some of the volunteer work I do. Thus the frustration of having to constantly save/deal with the normal.dotm template, almost everytime I create a document. I shall definitely follow up on your references and instructions.

Cheers,

Ron M

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Every time I open and use a Word (2007) document or create a new one, when I close it, I get a message that says that it cannot save the template …dotm, and I have to physically save it back under C:UserRon… This happens, particularly if I make changes/update styles, which I seem to have to do to get back to the standards I want every time I create/update/modify a Word doument. I do not ever remember having this hassle with any previous versions of Word and am wondering if there is a dialog box somewhere that will allow me (Word?) to just update and automatically save the new/updated normal.dotm template to wherever it is supposed to be saved. (Can someone tell me where that is?) This behaviour by Word is starting to seriously annoy me. Any help, insight, etc., that anyone would care to provide will be greatly and graciously appreciated. Thanks.

Ron M

This should only happen when you make a change to a style that needs writing back to the ‘owner’ template. If it is happenning even when you open and close a document without making edits, it suggests one of many nasty third party add-ins has been added to Word.

Check in the Word Startup folder and inestigate what you find. Try disabling them all in the first instance and test to see if that resolves the constant prompting to save to the normal template. (To disable, just temporarily rename them changing the extension from dotm to bad.) If that resolves the problem, add them back one at a time until you find the culprit(s).

You may also have to look in the Offiice Startup folder as sometime the add-in is place ‘globally’.

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This should only happen when you make a change to a style that needs writing back to the ‘owner’ template. If it is happenning even when you open and close a document without making edits, it suggests one of many nasty third party add-ins has been added to Word.

Check in the Word Startup folder and inestigate what you find. Try disabling them all in the first instance and test to see if that resolves the constant prompting to save to the normal template. (To disable, just temporarily rename them changing the extension from dotm to bad.) If that resolves the problem, add them back one at a time until you find the culprit(s).

You may also have to look in the Offiice Startup folder as sometime the add-in is place ‘globally’.

Terry, thanks for the idea, but I don’t as yet, have any add-ins that I know of – I am having enough “fun” with the new version not to start putting add-ins into the mix . I think that you and Gary are right when you talk about making changes in the “master template” and then Word is having to “write back” these changes to the master template. My complaint was based on the fact that in previous versions of Word, I do not remember Word making such a fuss about it – it just made the changes and saved them – full stop!! Now when I make changes, it asks about saving them and I have to physically tell it where to do that. It seems this sort of thing should be transparent to the user. It’s almost as if Word does not know where to save its own templates(?)…to me this is an added feature (read bug) that I don’t need and I also do not necessarily agree with Microsofts’s ideas as to how fonts and styles, etc. should look. Consequently, I should be able to change them without all this hassle from Word as is my perception of what happened with previous versions. Not only that, but when I do make changes and ask that they be global in nature, they don’t seem to stick(?). Go figure. Anyway, enough ranting(?) for now…

Cheers,

Ron M

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Terry, thanks for the idea, but I don’t as yet, have any add-ins that I know of – I am having enough “fun” with the new version not to start putting add-ins into the mix . I think that you and Gary are right when you talk about making changes in the “master template” and then Word is having to “write back” these changes to the master template. My complaint was based on the fact that in previous versions of Word, I do not remember Word making such a fuss about it – it just made the changes and saved them – full stop!! Now when I make changes, it asks about saving them and I have to physically tell it where to do that. It seems this sort of thing should be transparent to the user. It’s almost as if Word does not know where to save its own templates(?)…to me this is an added feature (read bug) that I don’t need and I also do not necessarily agree with Microsofts’s ideas as to how fonts and styles, etc. should look. Consequently, I should be able to change them without all this hassle from Word as is my perception of what happened with previous versions. Not only that, but when I do make changes and ask that they be global in nature, they don’t seem to stick(?). Go figure. Anyway, enough ranting(?) for now…

Cheers,

Ron M

I’m not at all happy about what you are seeing. It still is not correct. Is this a fresh install on a new computer or is it only a new install of Office 2007? If it is the latter, it suggests an incompatible legacy add-in.

Try testing Word in Safe Mode. From Start | Run (Winkey+R), type in

winword /a

and press enter. Word will open in Safe Mode to a blank document. Close Word now. Does it prompt you to save?

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I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding the issue, or if this additional information is pertinent here, but FYI there is an option, “Prompt before saving Normal template,” that you can disable. Click the Office button, Word Options, Advanced, and scroll down to the Save category. If the box is checked, click to uncheck it, then click “OK” to save your settings.

Does that make any difference?

Let us know.

Jan

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I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding the issue, or if this additional information is pertinent here, but FYI there is an option, “Prompt before saving Normal template,” that you can disable. Click the Office button, Word Options, Advanced, and scroll down to the Save category. If the box is checked, click to uncheck it, then click “OK” to save your settings.

Does that make any difference?

Let us know.

Jan

Box was already unchecked, but thanks for the suggestion.

Ron M

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