How do I enforce a template for all word documents?

[Guest]

Hello community! I am wanting to enforce a template for all word 2003
documents that show the users name at the footer. Is this is case of
enforcing a new normal.dot to all users or is there a better way to acheive
this?
Info: Office 2003 Pro deployed using group policy.

Many Thanks

 

[Guest]

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889495/en-us

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Rule No. 1: Don't mess with the user's normal.dot.

Rule No. 2: Don't share normal.dot - ever!

Rule No. 3: See rules one and two.

Create a custom document template that has your footer in it. Put this in
the Workgroup templates folder and make sure that all users have the
workgroup templates folder location properly set.

You could create a custom global template (not substituting for normal.dot)
that has a replacement button for the new blank document button on toolbars
that calls up your template instead. See
http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm for step-by-step instructions
on moving / sharing / copying / backing-up customizations including
AutoText, AutoCorrect, keyboard assignments, toolbars, macros, etc.

For more on the different kinds of templates, tabs on the file new dialog,
and locations of templates folders see
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm.

If you put a footer in normal.dot, you will interfere with the ability of
your users to create envelopes and labels, at a minimum.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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

Whoa up a minute here...

You want the user's name in the footer? That's not as easy as it sounds.

First off: In any large company Word is not usually installed with the User
Name properly set. It is usually defaulted to something like "Network User"
when IT installs Word.

The easiest way to do it is to include the Author field in the footer of
each template from which your users create documents. That field will be
populated from the user's User Name setting in Word the first time the
document is saved. After that, it will not be updated.

This means you have to visit each user and make sure they have their user
name correctly set in Word.

Or, if you want to use the network login name, you will have to write some
VBA code to retrieve the login name.

If you use code to get the correct user name, you then have to place that
code in either the User Templates folder or the Workgroup Templates folder.
If the code is in a template anywhere else, the user's Macro Security will
prevent it from executing.

Finally, if you use code to retrieve the network login name, having set the
correct user name in the footer, what would prevent that from changing as
soon as the document is displayed by a different user?

Things to think about.

Cheers

Hello community! I am wanting to enforce a template for all word 2003
documents that show the users name at the footer. Is this is case of
enforcing a new normal.dot to all users or is there a better way to acheive
this?
Info: Office 2003 Pro deployed using group policy.

Many Thanks

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410