Font default problem

[Guest]

I am a user with font default problems. Sorry, but I couldn't figure out a
lot of the suggestions already given in similar threads. In Word 2002, my
font default refuses to stay set. Trying set to Arial using the Font dialogue
box. Set it in both Latin and complex script and hit the default button on
bottom left, etc.; but when I close out of Word and return, the orginal Times
Roman comes up again.

I opened Normal.dot and set the default font in there. When I opened
Normal.dot again, the Arial font was there; but it does not appear on a
regular opening of Word.

Also tried dealing with it through the scipt dialogue boxes. Nothing.

I am using Windows XP Home, Word 2002. Acrobat Standard is also on this
computer (and HP Pavilion). Have Office 97 and upgraded from that
(overwriting Word 97 with 2002 and Power Point with 2002 versions.

Any suggestions? Could this be a registry problem? etc. etc.
Many thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

My guess would be that some combination of the following is the problem:

1. Normal.dot is not being saved, which means that changes are not being
saved. One reason for this is that an add-in is preventing it. If you have
Acrobat 7, it's the likely culprit; see the last section of
http://www.gmayor.com/lose_that_adobe_acrobat_toolbar.htm.

2. You have more than one copy of Normal.dot. When you opened Normal.dot
explicitly, it was the wrong one. Or, though less likely, changing the
default font was not enough to register as a change. After changing the
default font, try pressing Spacebar and then Backspace to assure that Word
will actually save Normal.dot.

3. If you were on a corporate network (and I gather you're not), it could be
that Normal.dot is read-only or reset to its default settings at startup.
This would be a problem for your IT admin to handle.

My suggestion to you would be to try changing the default font through the
Font dialog as before and then forcing a save of Normal.dot using Shift+File
| Save All. That is, press Shift while clicking on the File menu, which will
force it to display the Save All menu item. Click on that and allow it to
save Normal.dot. You can cancel out of saving any open, unsaved documents.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Well, good and bad. Mostly bad. Bad in that I followed your instruction below
#3 on force saving and now every time word comes up, windows says there is a
conflict and wants to open in safe mode. Problem seems to be in winword.exe.
I uninstalled and reinstalled and that did not help.

All of these occurred after an AOL-induced Windows crash (security software
totally locked up the computer). Consequently while Adobe 7 had been
reinstalled, it had not been re-registered. Re-registration brought on all
the updates and these will probably fix the default issue. But now, after
following your advice, I cannot even start Word in regular mode.

I hesitate to ask for more advice; but what would you do? I suppose what
I'll have to do is get a tech on the phone and hope the tech doesn't need to
come out and charge even more.


I am ready to go back to pen and ink.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I can't imagine any reason that just saving Normal.dot would cause Word to
want to open in safe mode. I'm sorry that my advice caused this problem for
you, though. What this suggests, I suspect, is that there is now something
in Normal.dot that is causing problems for Word, though I don't know what
that might be.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

TY for reply. Looks like MSoft "did it again." Finally, when trying to write
down the error info to give my tech, I saw, in quite (but blue) small print
something to the effect, "oh we have the fix for this..." Meanwhile Adobe
downloaded through 7.07 or something like that. Since this is a MS post
frame, I won't voice too much about my opinion -- suffice it to say, with
friends like BG, etc., who needs enemies?

Thanks again for pointing me to the Adobe problem. That DID help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If Adobe caused the problem in the first place, it seems hardly fair to
blame Microsoft.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Microsoft didn't do anything. The fault was with Adobe (or yourself for
failing to keep Acrobat up to date). And it still isn't up to date as there
is an update to 7.08!

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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