Changes have been made that affect the global template, Normal.dot

[Alanrwhite]

I run Word 97 under Windows 98

Every time I exit WORD I get the following message.

Changes have been made that affect the global template, Normal.dot. Do you
want to save those changes?

This happens even if I simply open and close a document without changing
anything. How can I fix this?

By the way, I recently had to reinstall a registry entry for WORD, possibly
because of template corruption which for a while prevented me from opening WORD
at all. This is now fixed.

The message above was appearing before the registry entry was restored, and it
is still appearing. I answered NO consistently before, now I am tending to
answer YES. Just in case there is a link with the last crash....

Alan

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Is Word part of Works Suite?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Alanrwhite]

No, my WORD is part of the Office 97 Suite.
I run a Dell Dimennsion XPS R450, so the software was preinstalled by Dell.
Bit this is a fairly recent problem.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It is still most likely the result of an add-in that makes changes each time
Word starts. Look at Tools | Templates and Add-ins to see what add-ins are
installed. If you see a likely culprit, you may want to try temporarily
removing it from Word's Startup folder (get the path from Tools | Options |
File Locations) to see if that solves the problem.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Alanrwhite]

Many thanks Susan - that has solved it!

It was a French language add in that was causing the problem. As I haven't used
it in years, I think can get by without it.

Alan

 

[Ian]

I have the same problem ("Changes have been made that affect the
global template, Normal.dot" comes up even if I just open Word and
then close it again). I tried the steps noted but nothing seemed to
work:
1) checked Norton Anti-Virus - the "Enable Office Plug-in" is not
selected
2) checked whether there was an add-in that makes changes each time
Word starts - Looked at Tools | Templates and Add-ins and none were
installed.

Any other thoughts?

My system details are:
- Windows XP Home Edition (5.1.2600)
- Microsoft Word 2002 10.4524.4219 SP-2

Thanks for any help!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word 2002 can also have COM add-ins, which won't show up in Tools |
Templates and Add-ins (the most common offender is the Microsoft Works Suite
Add-in for Word). To get information on these, see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the info...I followed the instructions to see what COM
add-ins were there, and the only one was 'Web Page Wizard' (which
wasn't checked off). I had also done a full scan on my system with NAV
(virus definitions to 10/22/2003) and everything was clean.

I *have* managed to get rid of the problem though. I'm not 100% sure
of what it was, but I think normal.dot must have been corrupted in
some way. One of two things may have fixed it:
1. I renamed my normal.dot file to normal.old and started Word to see
if that was the issue, but the message still occurred. I didn't click
on 'Yes' I want to save the changes to normal.dot at that point
though.
2. With normal.old renamed back to normal.dot I created a macro to
back up all my options (following some instructions with the intent to
delete the Data key & let Word rebuild it) and when I saved that to
normal.dot (this time clicking on 'Yes' I want to save the changes to
normal.dot), the problem went away.

Regards,
Ian Totman

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ah, in this case you have encountered the mysterious Wordzheimer's problem.
From time to time Word will get stuck in this way (I've experienced it the
past few days). It will prompt you to save Normal.dot every time you close
until you are finally beaten down to the point where you say yes (as I
finally did last night). Then it won't ask again for some weeks or months
until it gets confused again. There clearly is nothing to be saved because
if you said no the first time, any changes you *had* made would be lost and
would not affect the next closing. If anyone has figured out what causes
this, I'm unaware of it, but AFAICS, it's harmless.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.