Options for Template Locations in Large Organization

[Simon Shutter]

Hello,

I am responsible for consistency in communication for a distributed team (30
users with 7 different mailing addresses) within a large organization
running Word 2002 on XP. I am seeking advice on providing location-specific
templates to my users. I could create workgroup templates and get users to
change the path of workgroup templates to a shared folder on our WAN;
however, this will prevent users from accessing organization templates on
the LAN. Alternatively, I can auto-load a global template by modifying the
normal.dot of users eg:

Sub autoexec()
AddIns("W:\WAN\Team\Templates\Team-Add-In.DOT").Installed = True
End Sub

The advantage of this is that the global template can contain toolbars,
macros, forms etc that can be used to improve the user experience ie users
no longer have to navigate to a template folder, pick the right template and
then change the address in the letterhead. The downside is having to
create/maintain the autoexec macro and get the global template in the
add-ins list to begin with.

I thought that perhaps templates on a web site might be a better option but
the documents always load within the IE shell and this limits their
functionality to users.

Can anyone suggest other avenues which preserve or improve the user
experience while keeping administration to a minimum.

Thanks,

Simon

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Consider having location-specific information in AutoText that is in a
location-specific global template. Write your document templates to pull
that information in AutoText fields and put an AutoNew macro in those
templates to unlink the AutoText fields (so the documents won't change or
show an error message when read elsewhere).

Don't modify users' normal.dot. Use a combination of document templates and
global templates instead.

For more on the different kinds of templates and locations of templates
folders see http://addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm.


See http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm for step-by-step
instructions on moving / sharing / copying customizations including
AutoText, AutoCorrect, keyboard assignments, macros, etc.


--

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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[Simon Shutter]

Thanks, Charles. Although I've read the pages you cite, I'm still a little
unclear.

1. Do I code the AutoText replacement in AutoNew macros in the document
templates?

2. Do I have to create 7 different variations on the global template with
AutoText entries and then get the users to put these in their start up
folders?

3. Do I also have to distribute the document templates to the local
workgroup folder for each user?

Simon

 

[Charles Kenyon]

See below, answers to numbered questions.

Thanks, Charles. Although I've read the pages you cite, I'm still a little
unclear.

1. Do I code the AutoText replacement in AutoNew macros in the document
templates?

Yes, and no. You could have code for updating and unlinking all AutoText
fields in the Active Document stored in a global template (possibly the same
one that holds your AutoText). Then call that code from an AutoNew macro in
the templates that use the AutoText. Otherwise, you would put the code in
your document templates.

2. Do I have to create 7 different variations on the global template with
AutoText entries and then get the users to put these in their start up
folders?

If you have seven different locations, yes. Put these on your network and
change the user login to copy from the network location to a local startup
folder.

3. Do I also have to distribute the document templates to the local
workgroup folder for each user?

Local workgroup templates folder? While these are normally in a network
location, some places have them copied to a local folder as a part of login.
You do want the templates in the workgroup templates folder for each.

Simon

P.S. One other place you might want to look is:
http://addbalance.com/word/templatesmenu.htm.

--

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!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.