Hi Maja:
OK, let me give you the short version first: "There is nothing wrong, and
there is nothing you can, or should, do."
The settings of styles in a user's Normal template has no affect at all on
documents after those documents have been created. When a document is
created, it stores a copy of all the styles that were in the template from
which it was created. Those styles remain unchanged for the life of the
document unless you explicitly change them.
OK, now let's explain...
The Normal Template (which you correctly refer to as the "Global" Template)
is the local scratch-pad that Word uses to record user customisations. Each
user has one, and it must never be shared with any other users. That's
because it records settings specific to the user that owns it.
Nor must you ever set it read-only. If you do, Word keeps stacking up
changes to it in memory, until it runs out of memory and crashes (usually,
about mid-afternoon).
Now: The styles you see in Normal.dotm are influenced by three things:
Your View settings, What you have used, and What you have added.
If your View is set to "Available styles" in the Toolbox Styles section, you
will see only the styles that have been used in or added to the document.
If it's set to "All Styles" then you will see all of the styles that could
potentially be in the document, whether they are or not.
A blank Word document (or a default Normal template) contains a list of
about 147 styles (I think... It's a while since I counted them). Note: It
doesn't yet contain the actual styles, just a list of their names.
If the user USES one of those styles, Word actually adds the settings for
that style to the style name. The document or template now contains ONE
"real" style and 146 names. This process repeats until the user stops using
new styles.
A default template contains Headings 1 to 3, Normal style, and the two list
styles you mention. It won't contain the others unless they are actually
used on some text.
The styles that have actually been used are the styles that appear in the
"Available styles" list. The other styles won't appear unless you apply them
to some text.
Once a style has been used on some text, you can then delete the text: the
style will remain in the document. It gets created when it is used, then it
remains in the document even if the text it was used on is deleted.
As well as the list of default styles, a template or document will also
contain any styles explicitly added by the user, and any styles that were
attached to text that is pasted in to the document. These styles may or may
not be in the list of default style names; or they may be names the user
created themselves. For the purposes of this explanation, all styles are
treated equally: there are some differences, but let's not make this
impossibly complicated.
One of the simplest ways of adding styles to a Normal template is to check
the "Add to template" button after making a change to one of the styles in a
document. Due to a very long-standing bug in the design of Word, when you
do this, ALL modified styles from the document are then added to the
template at the next save. If the template in use is the Normal template,
they will all go into Normal. Any default styles that have not been changed
will not be added, only the changed ones; but all of the changed ones.
OK: For controlled use in a work group, the first rule is "Ignore the
contents of the Normal template!" The content of the Normal template can be
'anything at all', and you can never know or control what is in there on
another user's computer. Just get used to the fact that you have no control
over the Normal template. The user does, you do not.
When you want to control the styles in use in a workgroup, create a set of
templates, one for each kind of document that you create. Ensure that each
of the users creates new documents by using the templates. At the point of
creation, ALL of the styles in the template will be copied into the new
document. They still won't be visible until they are used in the document,
but they will all be copied into the new document ready for use.
Once a document has been created, it makes no further reference to its
template for styles: the styles in that document are a copy of the styles in
the template, and they will be unchanged unless the user changes them. Any
changes made later to the template will not affect the document: the styles
are transferred only once, at the moment of creation.
These templates are known as "Attached templates". You can have as many as
you like, and these ones CAN be set read-only to prevent people changing
them.
Hope this helps
Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Hi,
we have trouble with our templates. When we open a document from a colleague
sometimes the styles doesn't match. We all have a home-made-template and
normaly the styles may not change!
We think that the problem is the following:
Is it possible that styles of documents from our customers are automaticly put
in our normal template (= globe template)? So we don't have clean templates...
My styles in the Normal.dotm (in organizer) are:
- Default Paragraph Font
- No list
- Normal
- Table Normal
Some of my colleagues have a lot more styles in their normal and others have
the styles just like me.
What styles are normaly in that normal and what styles are not put in that
normal?
Can we delete the global normal and generates word a new global template? So
when this is possible how do we do that?
Can we secure our normal (global) template? So we can be sure not having
unwished styles in it...
I found out that I can secure our home-template, but that does not work for
the normal.
The problem may also be the following:
One of the people here still has the Word version 2004. All the others are
working with 2008.
Is that a problem when a person works in a document with version 2004 and that
an other person works later in that document with version 2008?
Can anybody help me please? What can be the problem and what will we do?
Thanks,
Maja
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