Tools Options Settings

[Anne P.]

Hi,

I have searched Microsoft Word help for the answer to this question,
Microsoft Technet (although a version from December 2003) and the Knowledge
Base on Microsoft's website and cannot find an answer to this question.
Maybe someone out there can help me.

Before Word 2002, when you choose Tools, Options and make changes to the
settings, the changes made were stored in Normal.dot. You could then
distribute that copy of Normal.dot to other users so they all had the same
settings. I made some changes to Tools, Options this morning, then copied
Normal.dot onto a different machine, but when I went into Word, none of the
settings I changed were there. I then went back to the original machine and
checked my Tools, Options settings to make sure they were saved. All the
changes I made were there. I then went to Windows Explorer and looked at
the date and time on Normal.dot and it was today's date, but about 4 hours
before I made those changes. Obviously, the changes were made to tools,
options because I can see them when I go in there, but they are not in
Normal.dot and I have looked around in the Registry trying to find the
settings and cannot.

I have found information about Tools, Options settings for versions of Word
up to and including Word 2000, but can't find for 2002 and 2003. Where are
these settings being saved? And how can they be copied to another machine.
As part of copying, I have certain settings set up in Office XP and would
like to copy those settings to Office 2003. Can this be done?

Thanks,
Anne P.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Your preferences under Tools->Options are stored in Word's data key, not
in normal.dot. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/DataKeySettings.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/WhatTemplatesStore.htm . The
Word data key is specific to each machine, and I don't think you can
copy the Word data key from one machine to another.