As a follow up to the last post I made on this thread, I'll now
mention an important thing, which I forgot to before.
In addition to having troubles with launching Word 2000, I can't
launch any of my Word documents, and this obviously can't be fixed
with the reparation of a broken shortcut (as I did with WINWORD.EXE -
see post quoted below), seeing as how there exists no shortcut, I
always save my files in the same folders, and before now, I've never
had any trouble accessing them, and I never made copies of them for
that very reason as well.
There's still a way to access these files though, the only way is if
I choose File>Open from within Word, and locate the files, but just
because I can find alternatives doesn't make up for the frustration
this situation causes, i.e. receiving that error message every time I
try to access the program or document in a way other than those
specified.
Speaking about the tip Graham Mayor shared, coincidentally, after
creating this thread, I browsed the other threads in this NG, and
came to a thread that was remotely related to mine, it included a
hyperlink that took me to a page about templates, which in turn had
links to template problems, so I finally stumbled across a FAQ page
about my very problem, called <a href="What can I do if my blank
document template (normal.dot) is not blank?" target=blank_>What can
I do if my blank document template (normal.dot) is not blank?</a>
The slight problem with the technique of renaming normal.dot to
oldnormal.dot is explained [at the FAQ] Yes, it's true you rename the
file and restart Word, a new default version of the file will be
generated, however it will differ slightly, and as a result certain
options like macros will be lost. But I already found an
alternative, also stated in the same page, I can edit the normal.dot
file itself, but there appears to be two normal.dot files on my file
system. (???)
It's unusual, but I believe it has something to do with a separate
problem occurring with my PC, that problem arose when I enabled
multiple users on the PC, this causes the PC to ask for a password
every time you start the system (which I intended) one that
corresponds with a user created.
The funny little problem is that if I choose cancel at the prompt,
rather then the system telling me I need to include a password, it
launches, but in a way where it reverts to it's exact state before
the my enabling of the new user, I've learned to avoid this by always
entering my password at the prompt.
Now how I deduced that is based on the paths for both normal.dot
files "C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates" and
"C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\'My Username'\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates" with the 'username' spot replaced by my
true username of course.
I'll also note that I discovered a third file named "~$normal.dot" in
the same templates folder at the last path I said, interestingly
enough, neither of the paths mentioned specify the Office templates
folder, located at "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates"
which contains no normal.dot whatsoever.
----- zeldamaniac44 wrote: -----
Thanks Jay, and I think I'm starting to get used to the
interface, just that I find it slightly irritating to read from such
tiny rows, and the scrolling becomes a pain, lol!
I'll try to explain my problem here as best I can, I hope this
is reletive to this particular group, or should be in App. errors,
well, I'll leave it up to you to decide.
First of all I'm running a Windows 98 OS, and the version of
Word I'm having trouble with is Word 2000, I have the entire Office
2000 series, but currently, only Word seems to have presented
problems. It sarted about two days ago, I created a document in Word
as I've done countless times before, I didn't save it in any unusual
place, I put it in the My documents folder.
However, soon after, each time I launched Word instead of recieving a
blank document I get that last document I created, this led me to
believe that somehow, someway, the blank document template for word
was modified or replaced, which is just plain crazy, because I know I
never did any such thing, but I did a file search nevertheless,
designating the Templates folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Templates) as the area to search, but I found no unusual files
whatsoever.
The next day, that was the least of my problems, for you see, I
clicked the Word shortcut on my Desktop, only to recieve a brief
"Windows Installer" dialogue box "preparing to install" immediately
followed by "The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM or
another removable disk that is not availible. Please insert the
'Microsoft Office 2000 Premium' disk to continue"
Yeah, this never happened before, and I can't think of a reason why
it would, I'll also note, when going to Start Menu>Programs>Word 2000
The same thing happened with that source, but none of the other MS
Office programs had a problem. I went into the "Microsoft Office"
folder at this point, and finding WINWORD.EXE, I clicked it and it
displayed the same "Windows Installer" dialogue box for a brief
moment, then launched Word, so far this has been the only source
where I have been able to access Word 2000, so I created a shortcut
on the Desktop to the WINWORD.EXE file, obviously the older shortcut
should point to the same file, but it didn't, when I checked it's
properties it stated no target whatsoever, so I deleted that old
shortcut (the Word launcher in Start/Programs is just alike, but I
haven't deleted it yet).
I think this whole thing goes further than broken shortcuts though,
and although I have a way to access Word again, the blank template
error (mentioned before) has not been resolved either, so I hope
someone can provide feedback here, thanks.
