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#1
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Template gripes
Hi,
We have some documents that were created on foreign networks. I suppose the creators thought they were using Word the way It Was Meant To Be Used when they used a common template and attached it to the document. Unfortunately those templates refer to .dot files on machines and shares in their network. Those machines, shares and files are not accessible from our network. As a result it takes a very long times (~5 minutes) to open one of those documents. It occurs to me that this problem is pretty general. Networks change all the time, machines come and go. Any document that uses an attached template from a "well known" location is vulnerable to this sort of problem. It doesn't have to happen only when a document is created in one location and read in another. What can be done to alleviate this problem? The only suggestion I've come up with is to put another machine on my network with the name and shares that are referred to in the documents. Is there any other way to cope? Can I create an additional name for an existing machine that will resolve properly for Word? Is there a way to open these documents that bypasses this template checking? Are there any recommended practices for using attached templates that avoid this problem? Who ever thought these were a good idea anyway? Thanks, Steve PS. I realize these are really newuser questions, but no other word group seemed appropriate either. Is there a better place to ask these questions and is there a move afoot to create more appropriate newsgroups? Also, some of these documents want a German hyphenation dll. Is there a way to acquire that in an English version of Word, (2000 or 2002)? |
#2
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Hi Stephen
See he http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830561/ For a variety of reasons, it's usually best to keep copies of templates on the local machine. If you are moving over to this scheme anyway, you may find that simply putting the template into the local user templates folder does the trick, as this template will be found first. (I haven't tried this trick for this particular issue - it may be Word will still be bothered by the missing path.) -- Margaret Aldis - Microsoft Word MVP Syntagma partnership site: http://www.syntagma.co.uk Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.word.mvps.org "Stephen Quist" wrote in message ... Hi, We have some documents that were created on foreign networks. I suppose the creators thought they were using Word the way It Was Meant To Be Used when they used a common template and attached it to the document. Unfortunately those templates refer to .dot files on machines and shares in their network. Those machines, shares and files are not accessible from our network. As a result it takes a very long times (~5 minutes) to open one of those documents. It occurs to me that this problem is pretty general. Networks change all the time, machines come and go. Any document that uses an attached template from a "well known" location is vulnerable to this sort of problem. It doesn't have to happen only when a document is created in one location and read in another. What can be done to alleviate this problem? The only suggestion I've come up with is to put another machine on my network with the name and shares that are referred to in the documents. Is there any other way to cope? Can I create an additional name for an existing machine that will resolve properly for Word? Is there a way to open these documents that bypasses this template checking? Are there any recommended practices for using attached templates that avoid this problem? Who ever thought these were a good idea anyway? Thanks, Steve PS. I realize these are really newuser questions, but no other word group seemed appropriate either. Is there a better place to ask these questions and is there a move afoot to create more appropriate newsgroups? Also, some of these documents want a German hyphenation dll. Is there a way to acquire that in an English version of Word, (2000 or 2002)? |
#3
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Hi Margaret,
I fully agree with you about keeping templates on local machines. Otherwise you end up with unacceptable dependencies on network topology. The trouble we have is that other offices did not adhere to that discipline, probably through ignorance. As a result we have to deal with the mess. Actually, I have to confess, we generated documents with the same problem, again through ignorance, using the seemingly normal feature of workgroup templates. I've had to avoid moving a share to another machine largely because our workgroup templates reside on that share. Offhand, in a group setting, I don't see any really good ways to avoid the problem. It seems like a design flaw in Word. Anyway, thanks for the link to the KB article. At least it gave me some VBA solutions that I had thought about trying to write myself. Cheers, Steve Margaret Aldis wrote: Hi Stephen See he http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830561/ For a variety of reasons, it's usually best to keep copies of templates on the local machine. If you are moving over to this scheme anyway, you may find that simply putting the template into the local user templates folder does the trick, as this template will be found first. (I haven't tried this trick for this particular issue - it may be Word will still be bothered by the missing path.) "Stephen Quist" wrote in message ... Hi, We have some documents that were created on foreign networks. I suppose the creators thought they were using Word the way It Was Meant To Be Used when they used a common template and attached it to the document. Unfortunately those templates refer to .dot files on machines and shares in their network. Those machines, shares and files are not accessible from our network. As a result it takes a very long times (~5 minutes) to open one of those documents. It occurs to me that this problem is pretty general. Networks change all the time, machines come and go. Any document that uses an attached template from a "well known" location is vulnerable to this sort of problem. It doesn't have to happen only when a document is created in one location and read in another. What can be done to alleviate this problem? The only suggestion I've come up with is to put another machine on my network with the name and shares that are referred to in the documents. Is there any other way to cope? Can I create an additional name for an existing machine that will resolve properly for Word? Is there a way to open these documents that bypasses this template checking? Are there any recommended practices for using attached templates that avoid this problem? Who ever thought these were a good idea anyway? Thanks, Steve PS. I realize these are really newuser questions, but no other word group seemed appropriate either. Is there a better place to ask these questions and is there a move afoot to create more appropriate newsgroups? Also, some of these documents want a German hyphenation dll. Is there a way to acquire that in an English version of Word, (2000 or 2002)? |
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