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Default Sharing templates on the network

OK, I've read up on best practices for sharing Word templates over the
network, and I'm rather disappointed at the hoops you have to jump
through. It's hard to believe that in order to be able to update a
template on the network you either need to insist on users maintaining
their own local copies of the templates, or you need to have everyone
close every document that could be based upon these templates. IMHO
that's bogus. Yes, I know that you can automatically update users'
private template copies with login scripts and such, but that's still
bogus. Whatever.

If there's some way now to prevent templates from being locked, then
please let me know. Assuming not, I have a few other questions.

1) I'm baffled by the file locking in the first place. If I rename
the template on the network that a document is based upon, the document
still seems to open just fine. What am I missing? If it's just not
having the capability of storing style changes in the template unless
it can be located, then that's fine, because I wouldn't want people
changing these shared templates anyway.

2) People have already created several documents based upon templates
located on network drives. If we want to prevent these documents from
locking the templates on the network in the future, do we now need to
update all of these documents to point to a local version of the
template? If so, could someone please provide me with the steps for
doing this? I *think* I have a general idea how this would be done,
but I don't want to screw it up.

3) I've read about the techniques for copying templates locally using
login scripts. These are tightly controlled by our IS department, and
I'm not sure they would make group-specific changes for stuff like
this. Besides, some people just lock their desktops and don't logoff
for days or even weeks. I'm kind of liking a scheme involving a
simple front end batch scripts that copy templates locally and then
open MS Word using the new templates (e.g., perhaps one script per
template). Does anyone see any issues with this scheme?

4) So what is to prevent someone from using the templates directly from
the network drive as they're doing now? Note also that we need to
have the templates stored on a network drive, and document authors also
need write access to the drive. That's because we maintain our
document templates with Visual SourceSafe, and the network drive
provides a location for VSS to shadow template changes. People besides
myself might be making changes to the template, so we all need write
access to the shadow location. I make this point because we can't
just change access to the network drive to read-only in an attempt to
work around this problem. (And I'm not sure that that would prevent
the templates from being locked anyway.)

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Default Sharing templates on the network

I ended up writing a script (question #3) that I *think* does the
trick. Figured I'd post it here in case anyone else found it useful,
or if anyone had any suggestions to it. If anyone has any insights on
my other questions as well, I'd be much obliged. Thanks.

(The script wraps a little from the news group formatting, but you get
the idea.)

begin script

' Name: CreateNewDocument.vbs
'
' Description:
'
' This script does the following:
'
' 1) Prompts the user for an MS Word (.dot) template stored in a
public
' folder.
'
' 2) Copies the template to the folder specified by the user's
"User
' templates" option setting in Microsoft Word.
'
' 3) Creates a new document based upon the template that was copied
to the
' local machine.
'
' The purpose of this script is to prevent an administrative issue.
Whenever
' you create a new document based upon a template, the template
becomes
' "attached" to the new document. This effectively locks the
template file
' whenever a document is open that is based upon the template. This
makes it
' difficult for the person maintaining templates that are stored on
the
' network -- you either need to have every user close any documents
that are
' based upon the template, or you must logon to the file server that
hosts the
' network location of the template and break all locks to the
template.
'
' This script essentially works around the problem by ensuring that
the user
' has the latest version of a particular template on their own hard
drive, and
' then creating the document based upon the local copy of the
template.
'
' Notes:
'
' 1) This script uses a File Open dialog control that supposedly only
works on
' Windows XP.
'
' 2) This script assumes that the script itself is stored in the same
location
' as the templates. However, it would be a trivial matter to
change the
' script to look for the templates in a different location.
'
' 3) This script will not prevent users from creating new documents
based
' directly upon templates stored on the network. To encourage
users to use
' this script, it is suggested that a shortcut directly to the
script be
' deployed to users.

On Error Resume Next

' Create a file system object (to be used later in several ways).
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

' Create an Open File dialog object and prompt the user for the
desired. Note
' that the GetParentFolderName method call is used to find the location
of this
' script, which is in turn used for the initial directory to present to
the
' user.
Set objDialog = CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog")
objDialog.Filter = "Document Templates|*.dot"
objDialog.FilterIndex = 1
objDialog.InitialDir =
objFSO.GetParentFolderName(WScript.ScriptFullName)
intResult = objDialog.ShowOpen

' Exit now if user did not select a template.
If intResult = 0 Then
Wscript.Quit
End If

' Create an MS Word object, and ensure that MS Word will be visible and
that it
' has focus when this script ends.
Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")
objWord.Visible = True
objWord.Activate()

' Get access to the user's MS Word options.
Set objOptions = objWord.Options

' Set a constant that corresponds to the "User templates" file
location.
Const wdUserTemplatesPath = 2

' Get access to the properties of the template stored on the network,
using the
' full path returned by the File Open dialog.
Set objRemoteFile = objFSO.GetFile(objDialog.Filename)

' Form the full path for the local template, using the path from the
user's
' "User templates" setting and the name of the template.
strLocalFile = objOptions.DefaultFilePath(wdUserTemplatesPath) & "\" &
objRemoteFile.Name

' Copy the file from the network location to the newly formed local
path. The
' third argument is set to "true" to ensure that any template that
already
' exists locally is replaced by the version from the network (in case
there have
' been updates to the template since the last time it was copied
locally).
objFSO.CopyFile objDialog.FileName, strLocalFile, true

' Create a new document based upon the desired template that is now
stored on
' the local machine.
Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add(strLocalFile, false)

' Get out of Dodge.
Wscript.Quit
end script

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