Thanks John and Shauna,

You're really just confirming what I thought to be the case having maybe
said it in a different way to start with.

If Normal.dot does not exist in either place Word expects to find it, a new
one will be created (from built-in defaults) in the same way that a new
blank document is created if Word is started without one. If any changes are
made to this normal.dot it will be saved (or the user will be prompted to
save it) - again just like a new blank document. The new normal.dot does not
exist in the OS's file system (neither does the new blank document) but
while Word is open the source of normal.dot is not relevant.

It is a tad confusing that it claims to have a path and about the only way I
know to identify the situation is that the "Last Saved Time" property will
give an error if it has never been saved.


In my Word 2000 I have an icon on the standard toolbar tagged "New Blank
Document"
In my Word 2003 I have an icon on the standard toolbar tagged "New Blank
Document"
I'm not aware of any differences between the two in terms of what they do.

--
Enjoy,
Tony

"Shauna Kelly" wrote in message
...
Hi John, Tony

I've seen at least one live case where no normal.dot existed, and I
learned
about it the hard way: my VBA code went looking for Normal.dot, failed to
find it and crashed. So I don't just assume that it exists any more.

FWIW, when Normal.dot does not exist, Application.NormalTemplate.FullName
will still produce a very convincing string that consists of the
UserTemplates folder & "\Normal.dot". But there may be no such file.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word


"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" wrote in
message ...
Hi Tony:

It's on the Standard toolbar, I think. It's labelled "Blank Document"
instead of "New Document", from memory.

Yes, the Normal Template data structure always exists in memory. What I
meant was that the "file" Normal.dot does not always exist. I must
admit
that I have never seen a case where it actually didn't. But that's
because
in Australia, chances are the first thing we do is change the default
spelling languages from English US, and that would automatically
populate
the Normal Template structure with a user specification, which will
force
creation of a file.

Cheers


On 16/3/06 12:35 AM, in article ,
"Tony
Jollans" My Forename at My Surname dot com wrote:

A well written summary.

In Word 2002 and later, a "Blank Document" icon appeared on the
toolbar.
This button does NOT necessarily create documents from Normal.dot.
There
are specific circumstances under which Normal.dot may not exist in
these
applications. If it doesn't, the blank document is produced directly
from
Word's hard-coded defaults. That may be what they were referring to.

New icon in 2002? Which toolbar?

I was under the impression that, no matter what, a Normal.dot always
existed - at least in memory. Under what circumstances is this not the
case?

--
Enjoy,
Tony



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410