Simple template seems to be way too big

[Mary]

Our organization is in the process of releasing a new set of templates,
which we do annually in our department. Some of the templates already have
some boilerplate content and customized toolbars, but we have one basic
template which we call gcgeneric.dot. This has a number of customized
styles, the same as those used in the other templates, but has no customized
toolbars or boilerplate text. It has two click-in fields, one for Heading 1
and the second for Text. It comprises just one section and only one page.
The footer has a brief copyright notice and our company logo in the footer.
The header has placeholder for company name, date and page number. So to sum
up, it is very simple. Last year the size of this template was 256KB, now
the revised one is 1MB. Why is it so big?

If I run the Open and Repair function on the DOT file, the Show Repairs
window lists a number of items -- Drawn Objects and Text Boxes 1-8, Internal
Data Integrity (Type 4) 1 and Numbered Styles 1. There are no graphics in
the file except the logo. If I delete that and resave, Open and Repair still
finds the same list of errors. Do these errors suggest there is some badness
in the file. How can it be removed?

We are using Word 2003 on Windows XP.

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Mary

Our organization is in the process of releasing a new set of templates,
which we do annually in our department. Some of the templates already have
some boilerplate content and customized toolbars, but we have one basic
template which we call gcgeneric.dot. This has a number of customized
styles, the same as those used in the other templates, but has no customized
toolbars or boilerplate text. It has two click-in fields, one for Heading 1
and the second for Text. It comprises just one section and only one page.
The footer has a brief copyright notice and our company logo in the footer.
The header has placeholder for company name, date and page number. So to sum
up, it is very simple. Last year the size of this template was 256KB, now
the revised one is 1MB. Why is it so big?

If I run the Open and Repair function on the DOT file, the Show Repairs
window lists a number of items -- Drawn Objects and Text Boxes 1-8, Internal
Data Integrity (Type 4) 1 and Numbered Styles 1. There are no graphics in
the file except the logo. If I delete that and resave, Open and Repair still
finds the same list of errors. Do these errors suggest there is some badness
in the file. How can it be removed?

We are using Word 2003 on Windows XP.

Then do a save as *.XML, close it, reopen, and resave it as *.dot (and
make sure you find the right folder again .-)).

This seems to be a good way of cleaning up the binary file structure.
Even very small templates, after minor changes, get that extras KByte
smaller that way -- in your case, I'd expect a lot more.

HTH
Robert

 

[Mary]

Hello Mary


Then do a save as *.XML, close it, reopen, and resave it as *.dot (and
make sure you find the right folder again .-)).

This seems to be a good way of cleaning up the binary file structure. Even
very small templates, after minor changes, get that extras KByte smaller
that way -- in your case, I'd expect a lot more.

HTH
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

Thank you Robert.

I tried that. After saving the XML file, I got an error message when I tried
to close the XML file -- "Unknown error returned from application. Error
caught at [file Connect.cpp,Line387], operation canceled. Contact technical
support if this error persists." What's that about? Anyway, I hit OK and the
file closed automatically. Then I reopened it and saved it as DOT. The file
size went down to 248KB and Open and Repair does not find any more errors.

After posting my question, I tried something else. I opened a new document
based on Normal.dot, pasted in content, including headers and footers from
troublesome template, then using Templates and Addins, I reattached the
template and styles. When I saved this one, the filesize was only 53KB. Also
no more errors shown by Open and Repair.

This latter method seems to be good with this template. However, I'm
wondering about the other more complicated templates in the group. They show
similar errors at Open and Repair, actually they show about three times as
many errors each. But would round-tripping through XML mess up the autotext
entries, macros and toolbars? Maybe I should start a separate post on this?

A little off topic, what is the correct way to reply to a threaded message?
The cursor appeared at the top of this screen, so my first impulse was to
type my reply there. But I notice your reply is below my original question,
so maybe it's best down here.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The issue of top vs. bottom posting is a hot one in some forums. Here we're
pretty lenient. Most people top-post because that's what our software
defaults to, and if you're following a thread and just want to read the
latest entry, that is by far the most convenient. Most people don't
bottom-post unless their software defaults to that position or they have
been terrorized by other newsgroups with more draconian policies.

--
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.

Hello Mary


Then do a save as *.XML, close it, reopen, and resave it as *.dot (and
make sure you find the right folder again .-)).

This seems to be a good way of cleaning up the binary file structure. Even
very small templates, after minor changes, get that extras KByte smaller
that way -- in your case, I'd expect a lot more.

HTH
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

Thank you Robert.

I tried that. After saving the XML file, I got an error message when I tried
to close the XML file -- "Unknown error returned from application. Error
caught at [file Connect.cpp,Line387], operation canceled. Contact technical
support if this error persists." What's that about? Anyway, I hit OK and the
file closed automatically. Then I reopened it and saved it as DOT. The file
size went down to 248KB and Open and Repair does not find any more errors.

After posting my question, I tried something else. I opened a new document
based on Normal.dot, pasted in content, including headers and footers from
troublesome template, then using Templates and Addins, I reattached the
template and styles. When I saved this one, the filesize was only 53KB. Also
no more errors shown by Open and Repair.

This latter method seems to be good with this template. However, I'm
wondering about the other more complicated templates in the group. They show
similar errors at Open and Repair, actually they show about three times as
many errors each. But would round-tripping through XML mess up the autotext
entries, macros and toolbars? Maybe I should start a separate post on this?

A little off topic, what is the correct way to reply to a threaded message?
The cursor appeared at the top of this screen, so my first impulse was to
type my reply there. But I notice your reply is below my original question,
so maybe it's best down here.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

I suspect that someone edited the logo in Word. Any change will dramatically
increase your file size.

You may need to recreate the template. Size and format the logo as you want
to use it in an outside application and then import it into your Word
document. Even so, a simple graphic will increase the size of a Word
document or template way beyond the native size of the graphic.
--
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


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[Mary]

Charles, I didn't think that the logo was the issue in this case. I tried
deleting the logo from the template and resaving it but filesize only
decreased by 1KB. I also tried pasting just the logo into a blank Word
document. That resulted in a file of 22KB.

I just tried something else. After I deleted the logo and did a Save as to a
DOT, the filesize went from 978KB to 976KB. Then I opened a new document
based on the revised template and saved that. Next I resaved it as a DOT and
the filesize just dropped to 56KB! Now Open and Repair finds no error
messages in this file. I pasted the logo back in from the original template
and all is well, the filesize just went form 56KB to 58KB and I find no
errors when I run Open and Repair.

I doubted you, but your hunch about the logo must be correct. The error
message about Drawn Objects and Text Boxe, Data Integrity and Numbered Lists
threw me. If these were really error why would deleting the logo remove
them? As for the logo being edited in Word, I doubt that happened though
maybe it was resized in Word.

I suspected that there was something else lurking in the background
especially since Open and Repair originally showed so many errors. I think
the template was created by taking one of the companies more complex
templates with autotext, macros and customized toolbars and stripping those
out. But I don't know how one can be sure everything is stripped out? Did
some of the murky stuff stick onto the logo? Is there any way to really
cleanse a template?