Moving Settings and "Normal" to a new Computer

[samuelmuindi]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I need to move my customized settings from an old Mac to a new one. In the past with Word X I just moved "Normal" and "Word Settings" into the appropriate places in my Library Folder.

In this case, I replaced "Normal.dotm" in the appropriate "Application Support" sub-folder. However, Word 2008 doesn't seem to recognize the new "Normal" template.

Can someone help?

Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

Well, it's a seriously bad idea to attempt to migrate preferences from an
old Mac to an Intel one. You are likely to live in Crash City because the
preferences won't match the hardware.

Similarly, the Normal template from the old version is in binary format: it
cannot be used by the latest version of Office, which requires an XML format
Normal template.

The closest you can come is to use File>Open to OPEN the old Normal file in
Word 2008, then Save As to save it as a a Word Macro-Enabled Template
(.dotm). Name the file Normal.dotm and put THAT in your Application Support
subfolder and you may get away with it.

Trouble is that there will be things in that file that do not exist as
objects in the Word 2008 object model, so you could get a lot of problems
with corrupt documents and crashes by doing this.

If you wait for 2011, you will have a much better chance, because 2011
re-instates some of those objects.

It's a risky move: the files have a different internal structure and a
different encoding.

It would be safer to simply use Organiser to COPY the items from the old
template to the new one. Unfortunately, the Word 2008 Organiser can't see
many of the items you would want to copy.

If you can find a copy of Windows Word 2007 or Word 2010, the Organiser in
that WILL copy customisations and settings safely from one to the other.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I need to move my customized settings from an old Mac to a new one. In the
past with Word X I just moved "Normal" and "Word Settings" into the
appropriate places in my Library Folder.

In this case, I replaced "Normal.dotm" in the appropriate "Application
Support" sub-folder. However, Word 2008 doesn't seem to recognize the new
"Normal" template.

Can someone help?

Thanks

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[samuelmuindi]

Sorry, I should have made in clear that BOTH Macs are Intel machines and that I'm trying to move preference from Word 2008 to Word 2008. So there should not be compatibility issues.

 

[samuelmuindi]

I should also explain that I installed Word 2008 on the old machine (one of the original Intel Macs) about 6 months ago and spent the better part of a day manually setting up the preferences, views, dictionaries, etc to match my original Word X settings.

This machine is now on its last legs, but Word 2008 is running just fine. So all I'm looking to do is to duplicate its templates, settings, etc on the new machine without having to do everything again manually.

With Word X this was a simple matter of moving the "Normal" and "Word Settings" files, but this no longer seems to work. Or am I missing something?

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, you're missing a file extension

In Word 2008, the Normal Template is "Normal.dotm" and the extension is
mandatory. If it's not there, or the file format is not Word 2007-8
Macro-enabled Template, Word will ignore the file.

If you have a valid Normal.dotm, you can simply copy it over.

I think that if you take the settings over, even between two Intel machines,
you will wish you hadn't. Many of the settings are hardware- and
network-dependent.

Try it: if it crashes and hangs, you will know why...

I know what you mean about "last legs" ‹ I have one of the original Intel
Macbooks that is now really struggling on Snow Leopard. But I am still too
cheap to buy another...

Hope this helps

I should also explain that I installed Word 2008 on the old machine (one of
the original Intel Macs) about 6 months ago and spent the better part of a day
manually setting up the preferences, views, dictionaries, etc to match my
original Word X settings.

This machine is now on its last legs, but Word 2008 is running just fine. So
all I'm looking to do is to duplicate its templates, settings, etc on the new
machine without having to do everything again manually.

With Word X this was a simple matter of moving the "Normal" and "Word
Settings" files, but this no longer seems to work. Or am I missing something?

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[samuelmuindi]

Well the good news is that there were no crashes or freezes when I moved "normal.dotm" over to the new machine. The bad news, however, is that my new Powerbook just ignored it. So I gave in redid everything by hand, for the second time in as many months.

 

[John McGhie]

If the file format is correct, and the extension matches, then the only
reason Word would ignore it is because the template is in the wrong place.

Word's templates can be "anywhere". Use Word>Preferences>File Locations to
view the location of the "User Templates". That's where the current
Normal.dotm that is in use by Word is, regardless of where it "should" be.

It is also critical to ensure that all Microsoft Office applications are
quit, not just minimised, before replacing the Normal template.

Because the normal template is held in RAM which any member of the Office
product suite is running, if you do not quit them all, they will simply
overwrite the new one with the old one when they quit, and it will be the
old version that gets re-saved out of memory.

Of course, if the Normal Template was not produced the way I suggested, its
internal structure will be wrong, and can't be used.

Hope this helps

Well the good news is that there were no crashes or freezes when I moved
"normal.dotm" over to the new machine. The bad news, however, is that my new
Powerbook just ignored it. So I gave in redid everything by hand, for the
second time in as many months.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[samuelmuindi]

Yup, I'm sure that I'm putting the new Normal template in the right place and that all other MS applications have quit.

BTW, we're corresponding on another thread about getting the Normal template to remember window size (zooming).

Is there any chance that these are related?

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Yes. They probably are related.

HOW are you sure you are putting the Normal template in the correct place?

Cheers

Yup, I'm sure that I'm putting the new Normal template in the right place and
that all other MS applications have quit.

BTW, we're corresponding on another thread about getting the Normal template
to remember window size (zooming).

Is there any chance that these are related?

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[samuelmuindi]

Based on the MS Word Help document, and I believe some of your own posts on this board, I have it here:
/Users/MYNAME/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

How do you know that's the correct place?

Have a look in Word>Preferences>File Locations>User Templates...

Click "Modify" and look to see where WORD thinks it is.

The symptoms you are describing are totally consistent with you having moved
the User Templates location somewhere else and forgotten about it. I
routinely move the user templates location, because I use five different
versions of Word on this computer, and I need to control which one is
getting its templates from which folder.

Cheers

Based on the MS Word Help document, and I believe some of your own posts on
this board, I have it here:
/Users/MYNAME/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[samuelmuindi]

That makes perfect sense, but unfortunately my version of MS Word does indeed look for the Normal.dotm template in the standard place:

Users/MYNAME/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates

So is this something that I'm just going to have to learn to live with? As I said, its not a big deal, but one would think that its shouldn't be too hard to modify something as basic as the normal template. I guess that I'm going to have to train myself to hit the resize green button every time I opened a Word document.

But thanks indeed for your help.

 

[John_McGhie_[MVP]]

Easiest way to modify Normal.dotm (and KNOW that the changes have been made...) is to close all other documents, then use File>Open to open Normal.dotm as a document.

Make your changes, then save and immediately quit Word to ensure the memory is cleared.

You must use File>Open to open it: if you do it any other way, you will get a COPY as a DOCUMENT.  No matter where you save that, Word will ignore it, because it is not in template format.  The file must be a Word 2008 macro-enabled template, or it won’t work.

However, Word remembers a Zoom Ratio, not a Size, so if you open a document on different machines, the size you set will be inappropriate for a different screen size.

Cheers

On 12/05/10 10:29 PM, in article [email protected], "[email protected]" wrote:

That makes perfect sense, but unfortunately my version of MS Word does indeed look for the Normal.dotm template in the standard place:

Users/MYNAME/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates

So is this something that I'm just going to have to learn to live with?  As I said, its not a big deal, but one would think that its shouldn't be too hard to modify something as basic as the normal template.  I guess that I'm going to have to train myself to hit the resize green button every time I opened a Word document.

But thanks indeed for your help.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum matters unless you intend to pay!

 --

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]