Lock normal.dot

[Peter in New Zealand]

I sync many of my Word documents with a Palm via Docs to Go, and the process
insists on trying to change the version of English, resulting in Word asking
me if I want to save changes to normal.dot every time I close it. In fact I
don't want it messing with it, as I have it set to NZ English, and it tries
to change it to US English every time. At the moment I just tell it no each
time, but is there a way to lock the normal.dot so that nothing can mess
with it? I have several macros, page size, margins, default font, and
language, all set to what I want, and would like it to stay that way. Would
making it read only do the trick, or something else please? Thanks very
much.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Peter,

I sync many of my Word documents with a Palm via Docs to Go, and the process
insists on trying to change the version of English, resulting in Word asking
me if I want to save changes to normal.dot every time I close it. In fact I
don't want it messing with it, as I have it set to NZ English, and it tries
to change it to US English every time. At the moment I just tell it no each
time, but is there a way to lock the normal.dot so that nothing can mess
with it? I have several macros, page size, margins, default font, and
language, all set to what I want, and would like it to stay that way. Would
making it read only do the trick, or something else please? Thanks very
much.

Theoretically, you could change the Read-Only file property (right-click in
Windows Explorer). That might cause other, regularly appearing error messages,
however.

You should contact the company that provides Docs to Go and tell them you
don't like them messing with your Normal.dot. It's rude And there are
people in the world who don't use US English.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
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[Peter in New Zealand]

Hi Peter,

Theoretically, you could change the Read-Only file property (right-click in
Windows Explorer). That might cause other, regularly appearing error messages,
however.

You should contact the company that provides Docs to Go and tell them you
don't like them messing with your Normal.dot. It's rude And there are
people in the world who don't use US English.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)


This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

Thank you for your thoughts Cindy. I agree about it being rude to mess with
my normal.dot! After all the work getting things just how I want them -
arrrgh! I have set the read only attribute, and it seems to keep it safe,
although I have to dispose of an error window every time I close Word. I can
live with that if I have to. I did post this issue on DataViz's forums, but
never got a reply. Unfortunately, as my Palm is an older model, the latest
version of Docs2Go that will run on it is a year or so old. They kindly keep
it available for download for old guffers like me (at a price of course),
but don't offer any "real" tech support for it apart from the forums.

Ah well (sigh). Apart from that Dogs2Go is outstandingly reliable software,
so I guess I'll stick with it unless anyone can offer any other suggestions.
I do quite a lot of document work on the Palm using a folding keyboard -
sort of poor man's laptop! <grin>

Anyway, thank's again for taking the time to reply.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your thoughts Cindy. I agree about it being rude to mess with
my normal.dot! After all the work getting things just how I want them -
arrrgh! I have set the read only attribute, and it seems to keep it safe,
although I have to dispose of an error window every time I close Word. I can
live with that if I have to. I did post this issue on DataViz's forums, but
never got a reply. Unfortunately, as my Palm is an older model, the latest
version of Docs2Go that will run on it is a year or so old. They kindly keep
it available for download for old guffers like me (at a price of course),
but don't offer any "real" tech support for it apart from the forums.

Ah. I was thinking through various macro scenarios, whether there was any way
you could avoid the "simple" (read-only) route, but things get very
complicated very quickly. If you "never" make changes to Normal.dot (or would
only make them when you know you haven't synched), you could avoid the issue
by simply telling Word there aren't any changes to be saved (little macro).
The dangerous part is, you might discard changes you want to keep. Or, if you
decide to force the save, you might saved synched changes you don't want. Just
to let you know there is an alternative

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Peter in New Zealand]

Hi Peter,

Ah. I was thinking through various macro scenarios, whether there was any way
you could avoid the "simple" (read-only) route, but things get very
complicated very quickly. If you "never" make changes to Normal.dot (or would
only make them when you know you haven't synched), you could avoid the issue
by simply telling Word there aren't any changes to be saved (little macro).
The dangerous part is, you might discard changes you want to keep. Or, if you
decide to force the save, you might saved synched changes you don't want. Just
to let you know there is an alternative

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)


This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

Yes, I can see how traps and pit falls could develop in that scenario. It's
not that I don't appreciate Word - I have used it since ver. 6 days, then
97, then 2000. But, believe it or not (slight OT alert here) I have found
that the more basic word processor Jarte, which is based on the Wordpad
engine, is doing everything I need, and, using rtf format the files race to
and fro between the computer and the Palm with nary a glitch. Mind you, it
took a while to find it. Some of the "simpler" level of wp programs work
better or worse than others with Docs to Go, and some that look very
promising are utter disasters with it - not their fault of course.

FWIW Jarte is now in the final beta stages of release 3, and looks to be a
pretty good piece of software within the limitations of that level of word
processing of course. Anyway, I just thought I would mention it here - sort
of "tying off the thread" I suppose. My thanks to you good folk who
responded to my original question - I appreciate your time and the fact that
the huge level of experience and knowledge here is offered completely
voluntarily.

Kind regards, Peter