Document crashes loading template

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Guest

Hi,

I have had several documents recently which have come in from external
sources which take 3-15 mins to load. I've found this is due to the document
template being stored on an unavailable network resource. Removing this and
replacing with normal.dot sorts the issue but is there any way to get round
the huge delay in loading while Word goes off to find this unavailable
template?

Cheers,

Andy.
 
Hi Andy,

If you're on a network ...

One of our guys here found that on the system on which he was working (don't
know what that was) he was able to get the affected documents to open more
quickly by turning off a particular network setting.

On my WinXP PC I can do this as follows:

Right-click My Network Places and choose Properties.
Right-click Local area connections and choose Properties.
Select Internet protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Properties button.
Click Advanced.
Select the WINS tab.
Select the Disable NetBios over TCP/IP radio button.

If this is a work issue it might be worth running this by your techie people
to see what they think. I don't know what (if anything these days) uses
NetBios so I don't know if you might get unwanted side-effects.

Cheers.

Ed
 
If the articles shown don't provide a solution to the long load problem,
press the Escape key as it's trying to load the remote template. That should
stop it from trying to load the remote template. (In Word 2007, fortunately,
Microsoft has added the message "Press ESC to cancel" when trying to load a
remote/missing template. I discovered that pressing Esc works in Word 2003,
as well, even though the message isn't provided in the status bar. This has
led to the discovery that a lot of documents I used to regard as corrupt,
weren't really corrupt after all.)

Once loaded, rather than associating Normal.dot with the document, I remove
the text from the document and save the empty document as a new .dot file. I
then associate that .dot with the document. This then gives me a template
that has the same underlying formatting as the document, whereas associating
Normal.dot sometimes gives undesired formatting results (especially when the
original template's formatting is quite different from Normal.dot's). I
don't really need to remove the text, but this a) makes the .dot smaller and
b) gives me a blank-document template to use if I need that particular set
of styles again.
 
Hi Herb,

Thanks for the tips. Looks like Word 2007 really IS more user-friendly after
all :-)

Just curious to know ... what formatting elements might get altered by
attaching normal.dot other than styles (if the option to update styles in the
document is turned on)?

Cheers.

Ed
 
Thanks to both of your ideas,

I'm not back into the office until monday so I'll try them out then...
 
Just the styles would be affected, but not only if Update is turned on.
Unused styles get pulled in as well, and might affect the formatting when/if
they are subsequently used.

I was thinking of the possibility that a number of styles from Normal aren't
being used yet, and the effective collection of styles uses a different
font, point size, or some other attribute. When you then apply any
previously unused styles, they will not be coordinated with what's already
in the document, creating formatting that is incongruent with the rest of
the document. Admittedly, this might happen only if the users are as
religious about styles as I am... but that does happen very once in a while.

The other advantage of creating a dedicated template is that it then gives
you a tool to apply if you come across other documents that are attached to
the same remote template, making the formatting in those documents
consistent, which can be very important if they ever need to be combined, or
if formatted text ever needs to be copied among them.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com
 
I agree with the idea that you now have a template you can use for other
documents and by creating a template and attaching it instead of the Normal
template you lessen the risk of styles being updated should the "Update
Automatically" option be turned on. So I agree with the advice in general,
but I have to disagree with the rationale behind the advice. :-)

A style doesn't "live" in a document/template until it is used, or modified,
at which point it's considered defined in the document, or "in the
document". When you create a new document based on a template, all of the
styles that have been defined in the template are also copied to the
document, even if they aren't actually applied (or "used") in the document.
So if you later use a style that was defined in the template, but hasn't
been used in the document before, you're still using the style definition
that was present in the template when the document was created, regardless
of the attached template. (Provided "Update Automatically" hasn't been
enabled.)

Other styles, such as the built-in styles that are not "in the document" but
are available for use, are called latent styles. If a latent style is later
added to a document then it uses the default style definition, regardless of
the attached template.

In previous versions this wasn't easy to observe, but now in Word 2007 you
can view the Styles.xml document part of a document/template and see which
styles have been defined and those that are still latent styles.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Co-author of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
OK,

Tried the "esc" key method and doc still takes time to load, and the
disabling of NETBios didn't make a difference to the load time either...

Any other ideas (this is doing my head in!)
 
Hi Andy,

I tried the Esc thing here with Word 2002 and it didn't work. From what Herb
said I'm guessing that this workaround was probably introduced in 2003 and
then made slightly more visible in 2007. Not sure what version you're using
but I'm guessing 2002.

I did see one suggestion by Cindy Meister that if you could have the
templates sent with the documents and save them in the same folder as the
documents things might improve (although that didn't work for me either with
2002).

The only other thing that might reduce the problem that I can think of is
the hot fix and registry key stuff mentioned in one of the KB articles -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823372.

If this is relevant to your versions of Word and Windows, possibly you could
try just creating the key and if that doesn't help, getting the hot-fix.

Cheers.

Ed
 

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