What are the potential problem areas that one should look at to trouble shoot
a constantly growing Normal template file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to 189KB in three days, without
having added any customizations to Word. Word has been used for the basics
of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am using Word 2002. I also have Adobe
Acrobat Professional installed, and unless it will be used, choose to disable
the macros.

"PA" wrote:

What are the potential problem areas that one should look at to trouble shoot
a constantly growing Normal template file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to 189KB in three days, without
having added any customizations to Word. Word has been used for the basics
of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

"PA" wrote in message
...
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am using Word 2002.
I also have Adobe
Acrobat Professional installed, and unless it will be
used, choose to disable
the macros.

"PA" wrote:

What are the potential problem areas that one should
look at to trouble shoot
a constantly growing Normal template file,
Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to
189KB in three days, without
having added any customizations to Word. Word has
been used for the basics
of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

It sounds like someone is saving info to the
normal.dot. Or worse, using it to create docs in
(saving to .doT).
If you don't need to keep macros, things like that in
it, just close Word, delete normal.dot, and restart
Word. A new, blank normal.dot will be created.
If you do need the info in it, rename normal.dot
instead, create the new one, then copy/paste what you
need from it.

Pop

Normal.dot is a user file and 189kb is a particularly small one at that. I
don't see why you are concerning yourself with this. However a better plan
would be to ensure that tools options save prompt to save normal.dot
is checked and then only required additions will be saved to it.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


PA wrote:
What are the potential problem areas that one should look at to
trouble shoot a constantly growing Normal template file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to 189KB in three days,
without having added any customizations to Word. Word has been used
for the basics of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

"Graham Mayor" wrote in message
...
Normal.dot is a user file and 189kb is a particularly
small one at that. I don't see why you are concerning
yourself with this. However a better plan would be to
ensure that tools options save prompt to save
normal.dot is checked and then only required
additions will be saved to it.

Umm, no, that's not really very small. A typical
"empty" normal.dot will be in the order of less than
30k in the win2xxx series, smaller in earlier versions.
Also, "prompt to save" doesn't limit anything being
stored to normal.dot: It simply gives the user the
chance to say yes or no to a proposed change. You can
also forbid any changes to normal.dot if you want to.

HTH,

Pop



--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


PA wrote:
What are the potential problem areas that one should
look at to
trouble shoot a constantly growing Normal template
file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to
189KB in three days,
without having added any customizations to Word.
Word has been used
for the basics of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

Actually, 189kb is rather large when you consider that a new one is 29KB and
more important, that it grows by itself without saving changes. We use
Office 2002 with Win2K
It is a daily growth of the file that is of interest to us.

What would cause it to grow - we have run virus, adware, spyware, etc scans
to eliminate any outside influences. Option settings seem normal.
Can anyone take a guess as to why the file seems to have a life of its own,
growth wise.

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Normal.dot is a user file and 189kb is a particularly small one at that. I
don't see why you are concerning yourself with this. However a better plan
would be to ensure that tools options save prompt to save normal.dot
is checked and then only required additions will be saved to it.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


PA wrote:
What are the potential problem areas that one should look at to
trouble shoot a constantly growing Normal template file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to 189KB in three days,
without having added any customizations to Word. Word has been used
for the basics of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

Have you followed the suggestion to always have Word ask before saving
changes to normal.dot? It is the best way of checking on what is being added
and when. In my experience, normal.dot does _not_ grow without saving
changes but since it is the default container for multiple items including
AutoText, styles and macros, it takes conscious effort for anyone using
these features to keep from having it grow. I keep the bulk of these changes
in other files but still have what I consider to be a large normal.dot of
about 1.4 Mb. I suspect that this is because I keep scraps of vba code in
normal.dot to use as a resource for working in other projects.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

"PA" wrote in message
...
Actually, 189kb is rather large when you consider that a new one is 29KB
and
more important, that it grows by itself without saving changes. We use
Office 2002 with Win2K
It is a daily growth of the file that is of interest to us.

What would cause it to grow - we have run virus, adware, spyware, etc
scans
to eliminate any outside influences. Option settings seem normal.
Can anyone take a guess as to why the file seems to have a life of its
own,
growth wise.

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Normal.dot is a user file and 189kb is a particularly small one at that.
I
don't see why you are concerning yourself with this. However a better
plan
would be to ensure that tools options save prompt to save
normal.dot
is checked and then only required additions will be saved to it.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


PA wrote:
What are the potential problem areas that one should look at to
trouble shoot a constantly growing Normal template file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to 189KB in three days,
without having added any customizations to Word. Word has been used
for the basics of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul

Charles Kenyon had a pretty decent asnwer to what makes
it grow. Unless you control it, a lot of "things" you
save go into the norma.dot. It's sort of a "global"
template.
When there are several users, who don't know that
normal.dot saves thing to itself, it can grow easily.
More important than the normal.dot being 189k is the
fact that, if several users are using the same
normal.dot, which they shouldn't be doing, you can end
up with some confusing results because things you've
set in it, change seemingly without reason.
If you have the wherewithal, you should set
accounts/whatever so that each person has their own
normal.dot. Either that, or enforce a set of rules for
them to work by.
A little inspection of the template
functions/abilities will helpyou understand it. Word's
Help does a fair to poor job of explaining it, but it's
there and does have the info you need for an overall
understanding. The following is from Help's Answer
Wizard for "normal.dot":
---------------------------------------------------
About templates
Every Microsoft Word document is based on a template. A
template determines the basic structure for a document
and contains document settings such as AutoText
entries, fonts, key assignments, macros, menus, page
layout, special formatting, and styles.

Global templates, including the Normal template,
contain settings that are available to all documents.
Document templates, such as the memo or fax templates
in the Templates dialog box, contain settings that are
available only to documents based on that template.

Note The hyperlink in this topic goes to the Web. You
can switch back to Help at any time. For more templates
and wizards, visit the Microsoft Office Template
Gallery.

Global templates

When you work on a document, you can typically use only
the settings stored in the template attached to the
document or in the Normal template. To use any such
items that are stored in another template, you can load
the other template as a global template. After you load
a template, items stored in that template are available
to any document during the remainder of the Word
session.

Add-ins and templates that you load are unloaded when
you close Word. To load an add-in or template each time
you start Word, copy the add-in or template to the
Microsoft Office Startup folder.

Document templates

Templates you save in the Templates folder appear on
the General tab in the Templates dialog box. If you
want to create custom tabs for your templates in the
Templates dialog box, create a new subfolder in the
Templates folder and save your templates in that
subfolder. The name you give that subfolder will appear
on the new tab.

When you're saving a template, Word switches to the
User templates location (Tools menu, Options command,
File Locations tab), which by default is the Templates
folder and its subfolders. If you save a template in a
different location, the template will not appear in the
Templates dialog box.

Any document (.doc) file that you save in the Templates
folder also acts as a template.



Regards,

PopS




"PA" wrote in message
...
Actually, 189kb is rather large when you consider
that a new one is 29KB and
more important, that it grows by itself without
saving changes. We use
Office 2002 with Win2K
It is a daily growth of the file that is of interest
to us.

What would cause it to grow - we have run virus,
adware, spyware, etc scans
to eliminate any outside influences. Option settings
seem normal.
Can anyone take a guess as to why the file seems to
have a life of its own,
growth wise.

"Graham Mayor" wrote:

Normal.dot is a user file and 189kb is a
particularly small one at that. I
don't see why you are concerning yourself with this.
However a better plan
would be to ensure that tools options save
prompt to save normal.dot
is checked and then only required additions will be
saved to it.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


PA wrote:
What are the potential problem areas that one
should look at to
trouble shoot a constantly growing Normal template
file, Normal.dot
I have a user whose file has grown from 45KB to
189KB in three days,
without having added any customizations to Word.
Word has been used
for the basics of word processing only.
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Paul