Tools>Options in Word 2003

[Sam577]

Hi,

When I make changes to the Options available from the Tools menu, does this affect the settings of my Word application on my laptop, or can I save any changes I make here as part of a template? (Does it make a difference if I have a document open at the same time I make any changes, or if I make these changes with only Word, and no template/document, open)?

Many thanks,
Sam

[HansV]

The Tools | Options dialog is rather confusing. Some settings apply to Microsoft Word as a whole, others only to the active document, or if you're editing a template, to the template and to documents created from the template.

For example, the settings in the General and Edit tabs apply to Word as a whole.
The settings in the Compatibility tab apply to the active document only.
The settings in tabs such as the View and Print tabs are a mixture.

By the way, Tools | Options... is disabled when you don't have a document open.

[Sam577]

Thanks Hans.

I want to customise my template so it doesn't have some of the very annoying functionality it comes with out of the box.

I want to do the following:

Disable automatic hyperlinks
Disable the (really stupid) drawing canvas
(In Tools>AutoCorrect Options) stop automatic numbering and bulleting of lists, as well as stopping the labelling of text with smart tags.

Would I need to advise the template users to make these changes to their Word application or could I make them myself?

Many thanks,
Sam

[HansV]

Disable automatic hyperlinks
Disable the (really stupid) drawing canvas
(In Tools>AutoCorrect Options) stop automatic numbering and bulleting of lists, as well as stopping the labelling of text with smart tags.

These are all application-level settings, not document/template level settings. You could modify them using code, but in general it's not a good idea to change application-level settings from a template, so it's best to instruct your users how to change them manually. They'll only have to do that once.