finding the elusive normal.dot in Windows 7

[dan2229]

Ok, let's be honest from the get-go. I am a cheap skate. I bought a low cost Asus laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1. Since I teach school, our license allows us to use the school's Office 2003. You know schools, never enough money to run the latest software.

So I have Office 2003 running on my Windows 7 laptop. A couple of weeks ago, I started getting caught in a loop while accessing Outlook when it was not hooked up to the Internet. I updated my calendar and exited Outlook. I got the dreaded message Do you want to update Normal.dot?

Never saw that before, and tried to go through what I thought was the correct steps. I said yes, but of course I was unable to do that as I got caught in a tight little loop. I tried answering Yes, No, Cancel, and just plain "X-ing" out of the window. Eventually it let loose of me. Then almost every day, I got the same message. I also noticed it would take 5-6 seconds to close the document (Excel is not effected by this weirdness), the page area of Word would go gray for 3-4 seconds, then disappear. Sometimes the whole event takes 15 seconds.

I brought home the disk from school, backed up my files, and uninstalled Office. Then after restarting, I reinstalled the Office 2003 Professional version. No changes. It still is slow to close.

I tried starting in safe mode and doing the winword launch to correct the problem. No good, I got into a huge loop that lasted over five minutes. Thought I'd never get out alive!

I have looked at a couple of dozen web answers as to where to find normal.dot, but none of them work for my computer. I have turned on show hidden files and show hidden system files to no avail.

So bottom line... normal.dot does not exist on my computer. Mmmmm.

Daniel

 

[jlockley]

1) Outlook does weird things from time to time. I find it best to delete the whole thing and reinstall. Your mail provider, if you pay for mail, probably can provide you with the most recent version. You will not lose your info or your settings, when you uninstall.

2) Yeah, that. BTDT. Odd you can't find it, though. In that case, I'd do the same thing. Uninstall Office, clean out any places with residual info and reinstall it. You will lose your settings, but it's easier to set it up again than to try to find the answer.

Just for the heck of it, though, you might first try indexing your files (let it run overnight. Life's too short to watch grass grow) and then running a search for normal*.*

I am finding this is not happening to me in W7. funny. I found something nice to say about W7.

 

[dan2229]

J,

What do yoyu mean by indexing?

Dan

 

[TonyJollans]

If you get this message when exiting Outlook, that means you are using Word as your Outlook editor. This does have some issues (which is why the mechanism was changed in Outlook 2007). I am unclear as to what you are seeing in Outlook and what you are seeing in Word, but ..

If you are prompted to save Normal when you exit (not something to dread, rather part of Word's usual operation), then something you have done has made a change to Normal in Word's memory and it wants to know whether to save the change. If you are unable to save it may be because you don't have permission to save in the folder where Word wants to save it. Although there is one other - theoretical - location, Normal will exist - if it exists at all - in your User Templates folder. In Word, go to Tools > Options > File Locations tab to find out where that is.

Slow shutdown could have many causes. Do you have any AddIns installed? Are you accessing files on a network? Perhaps your low-cost laptop is low-powered, or low on memory.

Uninstalling and reinstalling Word (or Office) will have no effect on the Normal template. Safe mode - now we're getting into more interesting territory - I don't know quite how to use Word as Outlook editor in Safe mode - and it may not even be possible (I don't have an Outlook 2003 system to test). You shouldn't be prompted to save Normal in Safe Mode.

Your bottom line - Normal not existing - is possible and not the cause of your problem, although it may be a symptom of it.

As already said I am not sure what you are seeing in Word, and what in Outlook. It would help if you could clarify that.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[dan2229]

Tony,

According to Word, I have no Add-ins loaded. The window for Global templates and addins is empty.

I have 3GB of memory and am running a Pentium Dual Core 2.20 GHz processor. I no large programs on this computer. I keep this machine just for surfing the 'Net and answering email. No network here, just my wireless box hooked up to high speed cable.

Is it possible to use another editor for Outlook?

Gee, it would be nice if I could insert screen shots in this forum.

Dan

 

[TonyJollans]

Outlook has a built-in editor - it depends what you want to do. That said, the problems with using Word as Outlook editor are primarily to do with using it at the same time as stand-alone Word so if you're just using Outlook it shouldn't be a problem.

When you get the message asking if you want to save Normal, what happens next? What is the failure you get?

Come to think of it, why do you need to close Outlook at all?

Enjoy,
Tony

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[dan2229]

Tony,

Closing Outlook is just a habit like closing out of InDesign or Photshop. I guess I have always used that kind of workflow.

When I first got the message "Changes have been made that affect the global template, Normal. Do you want to save the changes?" it gave my four choices: Show Help>> , Yes, No, Cancel. The Show Help was worthless. The Yes allowed me to go to a Save As dialog, but when I pressed Save, it reverted to the same aleart screen. Selecting No or Cancel sent me back to the same alert screen. I actually did better, by "X-ing" out the dialog box repeatedly until it finally gave up and disappeared.

The situation first reared its ugly head one night during a storm. I had the laptop unplugged and my wireless router turned off. I opened Outlook, went to the calendar and made some updates. When I exited, the alert appeared.

The same week, I noticed Word taking for ever to close. Excel does not act the same way. It closes immediately with no alerts.

Just how would make the switch over to Outlooks own editor. I only notice the message, Outlook is using Word as the editor occasionaly.

Daniel

 

[macropod]

Hi Dan,

First the bad news: Uninstalling Word does not delete Normal.dot; neither does reinstalling Word.

Now the good news: The default location for Normal.dot is:
%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\
(which you can input into the Windows Explorer navigation bar)

See also:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[TonyJollans]

I was being slightly - slightly - facetious when I asked why you closed Outlook. I never do, but there is no reason why you shouldn't.

If, after pressing "Save", the save doesn't happen it may be because you don't have permission (unlikely from what you've said) or that there's something else preventing the save - a lock (or something equally effective) that stops you overwriting what's there. This wouldn't be a complete surprise if it first happened during unusual circumstances.

As Paul has said, the default location (which is what you should have following a fresh installation) is %appdata%\Microsoft\Templates. If you have a Normal.dot there, try deleting it. Also, with Word and Outlook closed, delete any (hidden) files beginning with "~$", especially ~$Normal.dot

There is an option somewhere in Outlook (Tools > Options > Mail Format tab, perhaps) to use or not use Word. As I said I don't have 2003 to check.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[dan2229]

Tony and Paul,

Thanks for hanging in there for this problem.

Good news. I was able to find three files using a search for %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\

I found in order:

~WRD0547.tmp
Normal (preceeded by the Word logo for template)
Normal.dotm (preceeded by a blank doc icon)

I was able to delete them only one at a time. But each time I did the search again, the ones I had deleted returned. I was unable to hold down Shift to get them all at once. I also tried the Ctrl key to get them all at once. Each time I tried, I got a "boing" alert and the message, "Windows cannot find 'C:\Users\Dan\Application'. Make sure you typed the name correctly."

After deleting the files, I launched Word saved the file and closed it out. Still slow. Fortunately, I have not gotten the dreaded "save Normal?" message for several days now.

Also did the MS Fixit from the support.microsoft.com.

Opened a file, saved it, closed it out. Took seven seconds for the document to disappear and an additional three seconds for the program to close. Still pretty slow. Again, Excel collapses immediately.

Ha, the mysteries and vagaries of Windows!



Daniel

 

[TonyJollans]

A couple of things:

1. if you had Word (or Outlook) open at the time, those files might have been in use.

2. Normal.dot[red]M[/red] is a Word 2007 file - if you have that, it suggests you have a trial version of 2007 pre-installed on your machine, and it is possible (though unlikely, I would think) that is causing problems. If so, try uninstalling Office 2003, uninstalling the 2007 trial, and then re-installing 2003.


I can't think of anything other than network delays that could cause the slowness you speak of. But, unless you have some kind of customised install, there shouldn't be any network issues.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[dan2229]

Tony,

I removed 2007 trial version when I first got the computer; however, I do have the Compatabilty Pack for 2007 and the 2007 PowerPoint Viewer. Some on the admin staff have 2007 on their computers.

Could they be causing a problem?

I'm not on a network. This is a stand alone machine.

Dan

 

[TonyJollans]

The compatibility pack should enable you to work with new-format documents created by others but their having 2007 should have no effect on you. If you only have 2003, you can delete Normal.dotM as it is not used.

I have lost a bit of track now as to what problems you still have, but I am, for the moment, out of further ideas. Word, itself, does nothing much during shutdown - do you still have problems in safe mode?


Enjoy,
Tony

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