[Terry Farrell]

Many changes can be made permanently by editing normal.dotm. However, many
of the changes that you want to make can be done through the dialogs in
Word - such as page settings, font set, paragraph spacing, line spacing,
etc. and that is the easiest and safest way to change them (minimal risk of
corrupting normal.dotm). Those examples can all be done in the Font and
Paragraph dialogs by pressing the DEFAULT button in the dialogs after making
the changes.

Curly quotes (Smart Quotes) can be toggled off in the AutoCorrect Options
dialog (Word Options | Proofing tab).

However, most of these settings will only work for new document and not for
existing documents. If you need to change existing documents, then this can
be done in various ways dependant on the changes: attaching a new template
to a document, running a Find & Replace or using a macro are some of the
tools.

But in the long-term, creating your own templates is often the best method
because some changes to normal.dot (such as adding a header or footer, for
example) can have unforeseen consequences with other Word functions.

Terry

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
Terry, may I ask another question please.

I am not going to tamper with this, so do not panic, these are just only
questions.

Am I right in saying that, if I select the normal.dotm word file from
templates from within the office button and I change such things as "line
spacing" or "change curly quotes to straight quotes" or any other such
variation and I save it afterwards, does that mean that every subsequent
word document I open will automatically have those changes in them?

If so, would I also be right in saying that I should make a separate
template in "Templates" specifically with these changes in them for that
use?

You may or may not know this but being a Microsoft Word expert, would you
happen to know the exact format within a word document that professional
writers and author's use generally?

That includes all the punctuation, line spacing, font and anything else
there is to know for the general formatting of a manuscipt?

It does not matter if you do not know, I was just wondering if you did?

W.

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
Will do Terry, once again thanks for all your help :-))

"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
We recommend renaming rather than deleting as normal.dotm sometimes
stores special user create macros and styles which can be copied to the
normal.bad to the normal.dotm using the Oganizer. If you ignore it for a
few session until you are happy that nothing is missing, then delete it.

Terry

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
Brilliant Terry!!! Thank you very much indeed! It now works
perfectly.

Just one thing, renaming the normal.dotm to normal.bad has left a file
there in templates as a blank piece of paper with the filename
"normal.bad" and created a new normal.dotm which I assume is the new
uncorrupted file.

What do I do with the normal.bad blank piece of paper file, do I delete
it or just leave it there?

I checked all the other templates and there were no others there with
the ~ character.

Thank you so much for your patience and help.

W.



"Terry Farrell" wrote in message
...
That is correct reaction: when the Data Key is deleted, it is
automatically recreated when Word is restarted (but it will be fresh
and uncorrupted).

To resolve the other part of the problem, you need to find normal.dotm
and rename it normal.bad. Presuming you are using Word 2007 in Vista,
you will find the file in:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templa tes

With Word closed, use Windows Explorer to get to the Templates folder
above, select normal.dotm, right-click and choose Rename; then change
it to normal.bad. Whilst in that folder, if you see ANY templates or
files starting with a ~ character, delete them.

Now test Word again.

Terry

"Wendy" wrote in message
...
I went into the registry, but I did not change anything within there,
so no damage has appeared. All I have done now, is exactly what you
have asked me to do which is to delete "Data" in "Word" within the
registry. I have done this three times and rebooted three times and
after deleting the "Data" each time, it comes back when I reboot
thus, still leaving the problem.

Can you think what else it could be?

Thank you

W.