Where are Tools > Options settings stored?

[Guest]

What file does MS use to store the settings that a user selects through Tools

Options? Are the Tools > Options settings the only information stored in

this file?

 

[Guest]

Sorry. I forgot to mention that I'm running Office 2003 under Windows XP Pro.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/DataKeySettings.htm .

 

[Guest]

Thanks Garfield-n-Odie. This link did not address my problem. I was trying
not to bore people with too many details but I think I need to give more info
to get a proper answer.

I work at a site that just got one of those lovely "desktop management"
contracts. You know, the ones where they drop a computer on your desk that
isn't configured properly and give you an 800 number for telephone "support"
that includes no tier 2 personnel.

When we got our new computers our LARGE organization (we're only one site of
many) was migrating from Office 97 (!) to Office 2003. The people who set up
our computer profiles did NOT know what they were doing and told us that we
had to use "Word 97-2003 & 6.0/95 - RTF" as our default document type because
people using 97 would not be able to open the document created by others
who'd already received their new machines. This was not at all true. Word
documents are backwards compatible for editing all the way back to 97.

Our problems with this default format are twofold:
1. The files are huge.
2. If you open the document a second time and do "save as" to save under a
different name, Word changes the file type to an RTF file.

I figured out last week that the default document type was the reason people
were experiencing problem #2. Wrote up instructions and sent them to all the
users at my site. Some users here are not happy that all the individual
users have to make this correction for a problem that was caused by our
super-duper desktop management company.

Every time I have called the desktop management support team with an
advanced problem like this, they act like I am speaking Martian. So I come
to this page and try to get the answer to feed to them.

So ... can anyone tell me what file contains the setting for the default
document type? Is this a file that could be pushed from a server to users'
machines? What other settings might be affected by this push?

Thanks very much for sharing your wisdom. You have no idea how much I
appreciate it.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

In Word 2003, I would save files as regular Word (.doc) files,
but in Tools | Options | Save, I would check the "Disable
features introduced after: Microsoft Word 97" box. This is a
"sticky" setting that Word 2003 should remember after the user
sets it the first time, until the user changes it. I imagine
this setting is stored in the Word data settings registry key,
but I don't know how to directly access this particular setting
in the registry.

 

[Guest]

I have a workable solution for the individual user. The instructions I wrote
showed the user how to change the default document type to ".doc" to store
regular Word 2003 documents, as we should. The users are irritated because I
keep writing instructions for them to fix the Desktop Management people's
mistakes. They're tired of having to make little corrections to fix the
problems caused by the uninformed people who set up our system. I was just
trying to see if there was any way to automate the correction because I'm
sure it affects hundreds of other users as well.

Thanks anyway.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The part of this article headed "How to preserve your Settings preferences"
should be of interest to you. Once you have set the Options the way you want
for your users, you can distribute a macro to allow them to update their
settings (see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DistributeMacros.htm).

--
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.

 

[Guest]

Hi, Suzanne:

Thank you for responding. I didn't find anything about preserving settings
in the article linked to your post. I searched the MVP site and did find

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/FilesToBackup.htm

.... Which seems to be another name for the page that Garfield sent me. I
don't think this page has the info that I need, though, because "Save Word
files as" is listed as an EXCEPTION.

I think our users are just going to have to go into Tools > Options and
change the default document type to "Word Document." It's not that
difficult. As I mentioned in another post, they're just becoming disgruntled
because there have been several things they've had to fix because the Desktop
Managment people who set up our account image apparently did not know what
they were doing.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The link you were given was
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/DataKeySettings.htm, which is an
*entirely different* article from
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/FilesToBackup.htm. There is a link to the
"How to preserve your settings preferences" section in the "Settings value"
section on the first screen.

--
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.