The message "Changes have been made that affect the global template -
normal. Do you wish to save those changes?" is an important warning. It
means that changes have been made, whether you intended to make changes or
not. You can also get it when your template has been altered by a poorly
written Add-In program or by a malicious virus.
The reason for the message being shown repeatedly is almost always a poorly
written Add-In. The Norton AV Office Plug-In seems to be the most frequent
offender recently, but that can change as some other poorly written program
comes on the market.
Other offenders include the MS Works Suite Add-In, EZ-Photo, Adobe Acrobat,
and Microsoft's MetaData remover. These all install Add-Ins that mess with
your normal.dot when they shouldn't do so and don't need to do so. Some of
these are .dot files, others are installed. See <URL:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm> for
instructions on seeing what Add-Ins you have. (Having Add-Ins is not a bad
thing. I run Word with 15 Add-Ins, most of which I wrote myself.)
Start with the Add-Ins I've noted. If you have any of them, decide whether
they are worth the annoyance they are causing you. Probably they are not.
Disable any that are not worth the candle. Restart Word and see if your
problem is gone.
If not...
If you start Word using
Start => Run: Winword.exe /a
you'll end up with Word out of the box loading without your saved normal.dot
file, with no macros and no Add-Ins. You may notice that it loads much more
quickly than you are used to seing. When you close it, you won't get the
"normal.dot" prompt.
So, what you need to do is disable all of your Add-Ins (don't delete them).
Start by moving .dot files out of your Word Startup folder, one-by-one, with
Word closed. Restart Word and see if that Add-In caused the problem. If not,
put it back in and take the next one out. (You can put them in a sub-folder
of your Startup folder.) If none of them are the problem, move to the .com
Add-Ins that have to be uninstalled.
If your offender is not on my list, please write back and let us know which
one caused your problems.
Write to the company that put out the Add-In with a complaint, and possibly
a bill for your time.
Hope this helps,
--
Charles Kenyon
See the MVP FAQ: <URL:
http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
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from my ignorance and your wisdom.
