Normal.dotm

[jfrasier]

I was under the impression that normal.dotm was a user template not a workgroup template. However it seems that all users are sharing the template that happens to be in the workgroup template folder. I did a search on my computer and there was no normal.dotm on my c:\ drive. I have set the file location for the user to a folder on c:\ in documents and settings. This must be the default because I didn't change it.

How can I fix this? Now that template has margins of 1/4".

Jane

[Charles Kenyon]

Normal.dotm (or normal.dot) should not be shared. It should be in the individual user templates folder, not in the workgroup templates folder. I would recommend renaming the one in the workgroup templates folder to something like shared.dotm. To do this may require that all users have Word closed on their computers. If it reappears there, someone has that location notes as their user templates folder.

Charles Kenyon
Madison

Templates in Microsoft Word
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm

Intermediate Users Guide to Microsoft Word
http://addbalance.com/usersguide

Word 97-2003 FAQ
http://addbalance.com/word

[jfrasier]

We are just now starting to install Office 2010. Even though in Word it shows a c:\folder for user templates there is no normal.dot or normal.dotm. When you open Word it is using the one that is found in the folder for workgroup templates.

[Gary Frieder]

You may not see your Normal.dotm appear in your individual user folder, until you make a change to Normal.dotm and save it. Until you do that, Word uses a default, 'virtual' Normal.dotm, so you wouldn't see it.

Also, which version of Windows are you using? If you're using Windows XP, then the C:\Documents and Settings... path would be correct.
In Vista and Win 7, the default path for user templates is: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Temp lates

Gary

[TerFar]

Check the File Locations in Word Options>Advanced Tab.

There is a setting for default location of DOCUMENTS which may be simply the users' local documents folder, or a group documents folder on the server.

There is a setting for default location of TEMPLATES which is usually in the Users' Roaming Profile under Microsoft>Templates. This is where the local normal.dotm should reside.

There is a setting for WORKGROUP TEMPLATES which is where the company shared templates should be located. This is normally blank using a default install and needs to be set up. All these settings should be set in the distribution installation process. Note that normal.dotm should NEVER be in the Workgroup folder: every computer should have its own individual normal.dotm and must not be shared.

But as other have noted, normal.dotm will not be generated until the user as made a change to the default settings that need to be stored n normal.dotm such as the page size, font attributes, etc.

[jfrasier]

I understand all of that but for some reason this is not happening with our new installations. The user templates are setup for c:\ and workgroup templates are setup on a shared server. I just opened Word, changed the margins, selected custom margins and set my new margins as the default. I closed the window and got the message, "Normal.dotm was being edited by another Word session. If you save this document with the original name, you will oversrite any changes made in the other session."

I choose 'yes' to save it anyway. Then I got the message that "Word cannot save this file because it is already open elsewhere (normal.dotm)."

I clicked on the 'new' icon and it said "Changes have been made that affect the global template, Normal.dotm. Do you want to save those changes?" I said 'save' and got the same thing again - that I couldn't save it because it was open.

I closed Word and then was able to rename normal.dotm in the shared location. I opened Word and now the margins I wanted are the ones I changed to before. I closed Word and finally I have a normal.dotm in my user template location.

This is baffling to me, the Software specialist. Is there a way to avoid this?

[jfrasier]

I think I have figured it out. For some reason there was a normal.dot in the shared template folder. When someone opened Word 2010 it used that one since there wasn't one in the user's folder. Then rename normal.dot in the shared template folder and then when a user opened Word it was using a default of some sort and then when they closed it would save the normal.dotm to their user folder.