Mystery with NORMAL

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cjobes

We are running a mixed Office2000/OfficeXP setup. One person is in charge of
keeping the Normal.dot up-todate. All other users have a read only copy that
is distributed every night. This worked for over 2 years. When users go to
Autotext, the NORMAL shows in the list and when they go with the mouse over
it, a list with all the different Autotext comes up.



Since yesterday, some of the users see only a small blank box when they go
to NORMAL under the Autotext and nothing - including email signatures shows
up but the Autotext still works. What really confuses us is the fact that
everybody has the same version of NORMAL but only some users display the
symptoms, regardless of the Office version.



Does anybody have a clue as to what is going on? We haven't changed anything
in the setup. We also tried to roll back to a version of NORMAL from last
week. We still had the same problem.



Any idea/lead would be very much appreciated.



Claus
 
This is NOT the way to use normal.dot. Normal.dot is intended to be a user
scratch pad to store local information. Redistributing a virgin copy every
night must be extremely annoying for your experienced users and is a method
to assist a lazy IT department rather than the users who have to work with
the application. At least it is better than trying to share a single
normal.dot file - but not much
:(

If you want to share standards - use a shared add-in to hold customised
autotexts and use shared document templates to maintain a corporate
standard. Leave normal.dot to the users.

Delete normal.dot from the machines that have the problem and let Word
rebuild a new one. That should have the standard autotexts. If it doesn't
the problem is not that of normal.dot. My guess would be a minor registry
corruption or interference from orphan temporary files.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
 
Graham,

This system worked just fine and users are not supposed to create any
Autotext beyond the distributed Normal. The person that is in charge of
maintaining Normal has the file in the standard location (Documents and
Settings/username/etc.). She is one of the users experiencing the problem
that Normal shows up under the Autotext list but when you hover over it with
the mouse it only shows a small blank box.

I would appreciate any guidance for troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Claus
 
The problem is most likely to be associated with a minor registry corruption
in the Word data key - see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm

I am sure it did work. It is just unnecessarily inhibiting for no good
reason.

Autotext is one of the most powerful tools provided in Word. Removing the
user's access to it unnecessarily inhibits the use of the application and
reduces productivity. An experienced user will make much wider use of it
than simply inserting standard texts - the autotexts for which would be
better placed in the document templates.
--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
 
I concur with Graham that you are crippling your users use of Word to no
benefit.

The AutoText list and the AutoText dropdown menu are style-specific or can
be. Check what style the text at the insertion point is in when the user is
attempting to insert the AutoText.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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Graham,

Thanks for the quick answer. I will be at the site within the hour and see
whether this will fix it.
As to the "right way" of doing this, it is out of my hands. This client is a
law firm that wants it's users highly restricted. There is only one person
that is allowed to make changes to the Normal. They used to share it and I
talked them out of it, proposing the redistribution at night. The Normal
holds predefined client info, email signatures, etc. For some of the users
the email signature is not available (blank Normal) and no option under
Options/General/emal options, but when you go to Autotext they all show up.

Claus
 
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