Thansk for your suggestion. As it turns out, it was the "Read in Microsoft
Reader Add-in" that was causing the problem. I have posted a new message in
the Reader newsgroup to see if anyone there has a fix for it.

LuDean


"Charles Kenyon" wrote in message
...

The message "Changes have been made that affect the global template -
normal. Do you wish to save those changes?" is an important warning. It
suppplements your virus detector and handles other potential problems. Its
display means that changes have been made, whether you intended to make
changes or not. You can also get it when your template has been altered by
a poorly written Add-In program or by a virus.

The reason for the message being shown repeatedly is almost always a
poorly written Add-In. The Norton AV Office Plug-In seems to be the most
frequent offender recently, but that can change as some other poorly
written program comes on the market.

Other offenders include the MS Works Suite Add-In, EZ-Photo, Scansoft, and
Adobe Acrobat. These all install Add-Ins that mess with your normal.dot
when they shouldn't do so and don't need to do so. Some of these are .dot
files, others are installed. See URL:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm for
instructions on seeing what Add-Ins you have. (Having Add-Ins is not a bad
thing. I run Word with 15 Add-Ins, most of which I wrote myself.)

Start with the Add-Ins I've noted. If you have any of them, decide whether
they are worth the annoyance they are causing you. Probably they are not.
Disable any that are not worth the candle. Restart Word and see if your
problem is gone.

If not...

If you start Word using
Start = Run: Winword.exe /a
you'll end up with Word out of the box loading without your saved
normal.dot file, with no macros and no Add-Ins. You may notice that it
loads much more quickly than you are used to seing. When you close it, you
won't get the "normal.dot" prompt. Doing this may fix the problem, by
itself, but probably will not. Generally, it is a diagnostic, not a fix.

So, what you need to do is disable all of your Add-Ins (don't delete
them). Start by moving .dot files out of your Word Startup folder,
one-by-one, with Word closed. Restart Word and see if that Add-In caused
the problem. If not, put it back in and take the next one out. (You can
put them in a sub-folder of your Startup folder.) If none of them are the
problem, move to the .com Add-Ins that have to be uninstalled.

If your offender is not on my list, please write back and let us know
which one caused your problems.

Write to the company that put out the Add-In with a complaint, and
possibly a bill for your time.

Hope this helps,
--
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://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!

My criminal defense site: http://addbalance.com
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
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.


"LuDean Marvin" wrote in message
...
Recently, WordXP 2002 has been asking me to save normal.dot each time I
shut the program down. It will do this even if I have changed no
settings, or even opened a document to edit. I think this started up
after a security update. Any way I can get it to stop?

LuDean