Documents trying to access deleted Workgroup Template

[scooter79]

We upgraded from Office 2000 to Office 2007 last year.
Office 2000 pointed to a Workgroup Template location of \\ServerA\Templates.
Office 2007 has it's Workgroup Templates on \\ServerB\Office2007\Templates.
We recently decommissioned ServerA.
Now when someone opens a Word document that was created with a
v.2000/ServerA template, Word 2007 reports on the status line: "Contacting
\\ServerA\Templates\template.dot for information. Press ESC to cancel."
Usually the document will open after about two minutes of trying to access
the source .dot file, sometimes Word will error out. Or, pressing ESC will
speed up the process.
1. Is it nomal for a .doc/.docx to open it's original source .dot/dotx file
whenever it is opened? This is obviously not possible when these documents
are shared outside of the organization.
2. Many of these are protected documents/templates. Does this have anything
to do with this behavior?
3. How can I correct this behavior? Is there a way to break the connection
of the .doc back to the original .dot? Even if I were to put the old
templates back on another server, how would these documents find them in the
new location?

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?c2Nvb3Rlcjc5?=,

Yes, this is expected behavior.

The "attached template" can be changed manually through the Templates dialog.
(Display the Developer tab in Word 2007, then click the "Document TEmplate"
button.)

Using a macro, one would change the Document.AttachedTemplate property.

Correctly, the new server would be set up parallel to the old, the documents
would be opened and attached to the templates on the new server, saved and
closed. (Using a macro, for example.)

This can still be done, but it would execute more slowly. Or, if you've already
saved these files to the docx file format, it could be done by using a tool to
open and manipulate the OpenXML file.

We upgraded from Office 2000 to Office 2007 last year.
Office 2000 pointed to a Workgroup Template location of \\ServerA\Templates.
Office 2007 has it's Workgroup Templates on \\ServerB\Office2007\Templates.
We recently decommissioned ServerA.
Now when someone opens a Word document that was created with a
v.2000/ServerA template, Word 2007 reports on the status line: "Contacting
\\ServerA\Templates\template.dot for information. Press ESC to cancel."
Usually the document will open after about two minutes of trying to access
the source .dot file, sometimes Word will error out. Or, pressing ESC will
speed up the process.
1. Is it nomal for a .doc/.docx to open it's original source .dot/dotx file
whenever it is opened? This is obviously not possible when these documents
are shared outside of the organization.
2. Many of these are protected documents/templates. Does this have anything
to do with this behavior?
3. How can I correct this behavior? Is there a way to break the connection
of the .doc back to the original .dot? Even if I were to put the old
templates back on another server, how would these documents find them in the
new location?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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