The "unsophisticated user" who doesn't know what Normal.dot is is precisely
the one most likely to be dismayed when all her customizations are lost. If
you don't know that these customizations are saved in Normal.dot, then you
are less likely to be chary of deleting it, especially if someone
authoritative-sounding tells you to.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Idaho Word Man" wrote in message
...
Yes, I've done all the things you listed, but the original poster seemed
to
be a fairly unsophisticated user (she didn't appear to know what
Normal.dot
was). I didn't think I would hurt her too much by having her delete it.

Fred


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Normal.dot by default stores all your user customizations (macros,
AutoText
entries, formatted AutoCorrect entries, toolbar and menu customizations,
style modifications, etc.). If you had customized Word as heavily as I
have,
you would be extremely fearful of losing Normal.dot (and careful to keep
it
backed up). If you just rename it, you can retrieve at least some of
those
customizations through the Organizer. And if turns out that Normal.dot
was
not the problem after all, you can delete the new one and revert to the
old
one.

Are you saying that you have never added or deleted a toolbar button,
created an AutoText entry, modified a style and saved these changes to
Normal.dot? If so, you're either a very sophisticated user who stores
everything in document templates and global add-ins, or you have barely
scratched the surface of Word's possibilities.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Idaho Word Man" wrote in
message
news
Hi, Suzanne,
I'm curious why you feel so strongly about this. I always thought
that
deleting the Normal.dot template was a fairly innocuous thing to do,
since
Word will automatically create a new Normal.dot next time you start. I
must
have been wrong, it seems.
Fred

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

No! Not delete! Rename at most.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Idaho Word Man" wrote in
message
...
That blank page that opens as Document1 is your Normal template.
All
you
need to do is find the file called "Normal.dot" and delete it.

"dalemett" wrote:

A former staff person created a letter to her son on the blank
page,
document1. We cannot get rid of this letter and recover the
original
blank
page on opening the program or opening another blank page. I
even
removed the
software and reinstalled several weeks later and it came back
with
the
letter
on opening the program. According to her there was no password
used
on
the
letter.