Hi Mauricio,
You are misreading the preference description. When you click "Default"
in a dialog, then yes, the change is sent to Normal. That's what Default
means--"I want this to be the default setting". But you can change the
Font or Margins without clicking default, and if you don't click
Default, Normal is unaltered, and the preference does not apply, because
you did not change the default settings.
So, yes, *if* you have changed your Normal template, Word will
automatically save it with the changes, unless that box is checked.
But, most things that you do in a document will NOT change the Normal
template. You can make about 80 million changes in your document, and
none of them will affect Normal unless you specifically told them do,
and it's always a separate step to make that happen. It will *not* pick
up every little change you make in every document.
HOWEVER, the window size, zoom, which toolbars are showing, and whether
you are using draft or normal view are a special case. They *do*
automatically persist when you open another document. Word automatically
remembers the last ones when you create a new document--but these are
the *only* settings that automatically change the next document without
you doing something on purpose.
Usually, this is a feature, as if you created a document, and then
immediately have to resize it or change the view to draft because that's
what you like, you'd rather have that happen automatically on the next
document than have to keep re-doing it again or go out of your way to
make that be the default. But there are times when it might be annoying
(and actually, with Notebook Layout and Publishing View, it's getting
more annoying). It should fix itself though--let's say for some reason
you had a document open in Draft View, got annoyed when the second
document was created in Draft view, reset it to Page Layout view, and
then the third document should open in Page Layout view.
But Word is working as designed (although, you've showed me that the
design ought to be fixed).
That said, there's nothing wrong with checking the "prompt to save
Normal" box. In my test, though, it doesn't prevent the next document
from picking up the view, zoom, or size of the last window anyhow. I
think because these are not actually changes to Normal itself, but
settings that Word remembers somewhere else.
Daiya
