[Hank Roberts]

I haven't been wrassling Word since 2003, when John McGhie saved me repeatedly.

I'm back.

Question is, where are settings for compare and merge stored?
I thought they were in normal.dot/dotm -- want to be sure. Details below:

(Aside -- I'm not a programmer; I'm good at recognizing language that's mangled by software; I'm looking at test file output)

With each new version of his software, every day or so, I get a fresh normal.dot/dotm installed (overwriting what's there)

I'm doing this with a handful of combinations every day, any combination from Office 2003, 2007, or 2010, run under Windows XP, 7Pro, or 7_64-bit.

I start a routine that opens a Word doc, 'types' test text into it, then calls up a comparison: the document his tool created today against a golden document.
(Lots of little test files involved, lots of comparisons every day.)

The comparison I used to get was fine. I've lost it somehow.

The comparison always used to show the three panels: old, new, and combined with changes -- so I could see what his software did vs. what should have done.

Suddenly, I'm getting single document comparisons instead when his tool finishes running.

I can set those options myself, once, and they stick -- until the next time his next version arrives.

I think the setting is lost by overwriting normal.dot/dotm.

I think he can setting those toolbar options for compare and merge, at his development machine, when creating his new test version every day.

He's no more fan of Word than I am, he's doing complex stuff not setting toolbars and isn't real sure what changed about this.

Am I right that's the only place Word stores the compare and merge toolbar setting?

Can he make the setting get set to three-panel display before sending me his new version?

No clue how this got lost after working without any fiddling for a year or more, many hundreds of times.