Templates in alternative startup location are not recognized

[Guest]

I've just moved up to Office 2003 from 2000.

In Excel, all the templates that I have been using from our group templates
location (set as the "At startup, open all the files in" location) are not
recognized. Two or three (out of 14) are listed without icons, and when you
click them, the pointer changes briefly and nothing happens.

They are also shown when you click the "On my computer" link, but behave the
same way (i.e. do nothing) when clicked.

These are prper templates (Save as, *.xlt etc), and I've even recreated one
using Excel 2003 with the same effect. If I move the template to my personal
templates directory on my hard disk, they are accessible to me, but the whole
point is that they are workgroup templates.

Any help is welcome, and thanks.

 

[Dave Peterson]

That "at startup, open all files in" box isn't really used for storing the group
template location.

I think it's intended to be used when you're working on a project and you have a
few workbooks in a dedicated folder that you always want to have open each time
you start excel.

You can use MSWord to change the workgroup template location.

Inside MSWord.
tools|options|file locations tab
modify workgroup templates

(Excel will respect this setting, but won't let you change it.)

 

[Guest]

Thanks Dave. Tha worked fine.

You never used to be able to mix Excel and Word templates in the same
folder, or Excel had a nervous breakdown, which is why the alternate startup
location was used for this function. This doesn't seem to be a problem any
more though.

One other point, for anyone wh's interested. One of the templates is a
shortcut, simply because the template is updated frequently and it's easier
to keep it and its associated files elsewhere on the server. This one is
still ignored when you try to open it from the shortcut within the templates
directory.