header/footer options

[Shelley Liebman]

I am new to Office 2003 and very annoyed at many settings that I cannot find
to change and things that are different from the Office 97 suite which we
upgraded from. Please help.......
In the header/footer toolbar (which I use on every document I create to
insert the path of the docuement I am creating) the option for "insert
autotext" is grayed out.
Why would I not have this option, is this some stupid security setting
somewhere?

Also, just a general comment, which I did also forward to the online
Microsoft help.
Out of about 10 different occasions in which I tried to use the online help
in word, not once did I find what I was looking for. I tried all sorts of
different subject headings etc. but to no avail.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Chances are that you have altered normal.dot and have lost your AutoText.
Try (with Word closed) renaming normal.dot to normalold.dot. Reopen Word and
see if your problem is fixed.

Charles Kenyon

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Shelley,

The only way I was able to get that button grayed out was to delete all the
AutoText entries from the Normal.dot template. That also caused the Insert >
AutoText item on the main menu bar to show only a New AutoText entry instead
of the usual list.

If this is what you see, then one of the most common ways that could happen
is if you saved a regular document as "Normal.dot" in the templates folder.
Documents never contain AutoText. (It's possible that it's a real Normal.dot
but damaged in some way.)

To fix it, shut down Word, find Normal.dot (it should be in C:\Documents and
Settings\<your name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates) and rename it to
something else. Then restart Word. If necessary you can use the Organizer to
copy styles and other items from the old Normal.dot to the new one.

I'm not surprised that you didn't find this topic in the help, because it's
an abnormal situation. Would you expect your car's owner manual to say
"Don't drive the car when its tank is full of orange Jello" and list that in
the index?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Although it is an anomoly, it seems to be a recurrent one. I would say it
shows up more than twice a week in these newsgroups.

Charles Kenyon

 

[Shelley Liebman]

Our Microsoft word is coming from the file server, not on my individual pc.
I did find the normal template on the server and renamed it, and then
re-opened word again. The header/footer insert autotext is still grayed out.
Under the insert menu option autotext, the "new" option is grayed out, but I
do have the autotext option there. When I open that, I get a "autocorrect"
dialog box with 5 different tabs, but I can't find what I am looking for here.
Is this an issue because I am on a network, or do you think that something
else is happening to this template?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Look in the folder listed in
Tools > Options > File Locations
for user templates. That is your normal.dot.

Charles Kenyon

 

[Shelley Liebman]

I renamed the template, with word closed, re-opened and still am missing the
autotext. After doing this though, I should be able to go to the templates
and there should be a new normal.dot correct? Because the old one, (the one
I renamed) is still there, but there is no new normal.dot.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Make sure that you are changing the correct normal.dot. Sometimes there is
more than one on your computer. (There should only be one per user.) Look
under
Tools > Options > File Locations for the user templates folder.

A new normal.dot should be created when you close Word. However, some people
have reported that this doesn't happen unless a change is made to the
defaults.

That your AutoText doesn't appear indicates to me that you didn't find the
correct normal.dot for your installation.

Charles Kenyon

 

[Shelley Liebman]

After doing some more investigation I found that our part time computer guy
messed with the normal template. I was finally able to get the autotext back
on my computer--going into the original normal template and using the
organizer. But when I open a new document on some of the other computers in
house, the autotext is not there--but it is there on some others--very
strange and when he comes in next week we will get everything sorted out.
Thanks for all the help

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You are welcome. There are almost always better ways to accomplish a goal
than replacing normal.dot. Have your computer guy do some checking. For
sharing customizations, look at
http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm.

--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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