Hi there,
Three options, you can actually use all of them at the same time if you
want!.
1)
If you want all company templates to be protected like that...
Work it out with the IT people at your company:
Place all the templates in a folder with limited access rights, general
users would have only Read access, so they would not be able to modify its
content.
2)
If that is too much trouble... (It is not always easy to change company
network rights... IT people can be "distant"!) Or if you want to selectively
apply this policy to some particular templates...
When you finish setting up your template as you want it, make it Read Only:
In the Windows Explorer window, select your template;
Right click it;
Select properties;
Check Read only at the bottom;
Hit OK.
3)
The above two methods should be OK, but if users try (intentionally or not)
to change the template they will be prompted to give it another name... If
they think they should rename it, the original will be left intact, but
after a few months you could end up with a 200 templates where you had only
3! (Unless the first method is used)
So, when you have finished your template, do the following:
Before closing it, do ALT-F11;
You will be taken to the VBA IDE window;
Locate your template name in the project pane on the left;
Under its name you should see something called "ThisDocument";
Double-click on it to activate its code window;
In the code window to the right, you will see two dropdown list at the top;
In the one on the left, select "Document";
The following will appear in the code window:
Private Sub Document_New()
End Sub
Ignore that;
Place the cursor under the "End Sub";
Go to the next dropdown list;
Select "Close";
The following will appear with the cursor in the middle:
Private Sub Document_Close()
End Sub
Just where the cursor is, between the "Private ..." and "End...", type or
paste the following:
ActiveDocument.AttachedTemplate.Saved = True
This will prevent the prompt asking them if they want to save the template
when they close the document (but not when they save their document, then
Word tries to save the template as well). But this way, you'd be covered
most of the time. This is why method three alone is not enough.
Finally, the only training you would need regarding this issue is to tell
users to say no when the prompt comes up asking them if they want to save
the template (if you used method two, they won't be able to anyway!).
HTH
--
Cheers!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site:
http://www.word.mvps.org
