Workgroup Templates change sytles from user to user

B

bco

We're having a problem with workgroup templates. Whenever one of our users
opens a template document the base style (in our case body text) changes to
underline. Since most of the other styles are based upon this style, the
whole document changes.

While reversion to the correct style is simple, whether done by the user or
someone else, this is a tremendous time waster and can cause problems when
documents are shared with a number of users.

Any suggestions short of reformatting his hard disk and starting over from
scratch? (We've uninstalled office, deleted all existing styles and
reinstalled with a newer version to no avail.)

Thanks in advance,

Barry Cohen
[email protected]
 
C

Charles Kenyon

Which version of Word?

Does this happen with new documents based on the template or on documents
received from another user?

I suspect that a new document based on your template(s) has the switch under
Tools => Templates and Add-Ins set to automatically update styles from the
template. When it is opened by a new user, the document is not finding the
template and is refreshing styles from that user's normal.dot.

That switch (to automatically update styles) seems like a good choice but
seldom is. Getting out of your templates, though is going to be a problem if
the templates contain customizations other than the text formatting. For
those that only contain text formatting, create a new document based on the
template. In that document, click the switch off. Then save that document as
a template to the same name as your workgroup template (in a different
directory). Finally, copy it over the workgroup template.

For templates that hold more than the text (macros, AutoText, etc.) you
would want to copy those customizations as well. See
http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm for step-by-step instructions
on moving / sharing / copying customizations including AutoText,
AutoCorrect, keyboard assignments, macros, etc.
 
B

bco

Thanks for your suggestions. They should prove to be very helpful.

Everyone inside the office is using XP, and none of our outside folk are
using anything earlier than 2000, so that shouldn't be a problem. I suspect
it's the auto update switch, even though all users' normal.dot is supposed
to be the same. I'll check when he's next in the office.

I really appreciate your web site - it's an excellent reference which I'll
be pointing my writers to from now on.

Thanks

Barry Cohen
 
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