Custom Templates

  • Thread starter Thread starter BJ McGowan
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BJ McGowan

Hi all,

We have just upgraded to Office 2003 (from Office 97 - yeah 'bout time i
know!). We have a drive on our network server that we store all our
corporate templates on, and under 97 were able to set this as an option
for opening new files from. However, now it seems that this ability is
no longer. There appears to be an 'alternate location' path that can be
set, however, this brings up errors on startup of excel as it doesn't
recognise the .dot files that are in this share as well.

How can we have excel point to this network folder so that we can open
our templates when a new file is requested?

Cheers for any info.

Berk McGowan
 
Jim Rech just posted this in .programming to a similar question:

I've found that if you manually add the registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\General\SharedTemplates


then Excel 2000 will include templates it finds on that path.

You have to use the Regedit.exe program to add this entry, which you can
start from Start->Run.

=====
Change that 9.0 to your version of excel 11.0 for 2003??
=====

I posted this, but the original poster said it didn't work in xl2003. You may
want to try it--just to verify:

Try changing it in MSWord.

xl2002 finds the location that way.

=========


And .dot files are document templates--for MSWord. .xlt is a workbook template.
 
I must say that there are certainly enough ways to network templates (XL or
Word) so that it's really unnecessary to have to go into the registry.

Since MS Office was mentioned, which means Word, as well as XL, are on the
server, one can easily utilize Redmond's questionable wisdom of placing the
template control of the whole of Office into Word.

Again, this is just *one* of the ways to network XL templates:

To set up a template file location for Office, which in this case includes
XL and Word,

*FROM WORD*:
<Tools> <Options> <FileLocations> tab,
In the left column, "UserTemplates" should already have a default file
location on the C:\ drive listed in the right column.
Just under it is "WorkGroupTemplates" which should have *nothing* listed in
the right column.

Select WorkgroupTemplates and click the "Modify" button,
Now, simply browse (navigate) to your template file location on your server
and click <OK>, then <OK> again.
And you're done ... FOR JUST THIS MACHINE !

You must now go to all the machines on the network that you wish to be able
to access these template files, and enter the path just as you did to this
first machine.

After which, from
<File> <New>
In *both* XL and Word,
the templates will be accessable from the General tab.

Jim Rech just posted this in .programming to a similar question:

I've found that if you manually add the registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\General\SharedTemplat
es


then Excel 2000 will include templates it finds on that path.

You have to use the Regedit.exe program to add this entry, which you can
start from Start->Run.

=====
Change that 9.0 to your version of excel 11.0 for 2003??
=====

I posted this, but the original poster said it didn't work in xl2003. You
may
want to try it--just to verify:

Try changing it in MSWord.

xl2002 finds the location that way.

=========


And .dot files are document templates--for MSWord. .xlt is a workbook
template.
 
That's what I thought until I suggested this to someone using Office 2003
(yesterday).

That poster said changing it via word didn't work.

(I was hoping that this poster would try it to verify the results of the
yesterday.)

Did you try it in Office 2003?

(Not available to me.)
 
Don't have it either.
But, there's a couple of other approaches to network XL templates besides
using Word.

However, I can't verify that *they* work in 2003 either ! ! !
--


Regards,

RD
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
-------------------------------------------------------------------

That's what I thought until I suggested this to someone using Office 2003
(yesterday).

That poster said changing it via word didn't work.

(I was hoping that this poster would try it to verify the results of the
yesterday.)

Did you try it in Office 2003?

(Not available to me.)
 
Hi guys,

Thanks for your responses.

RagDyer was spot on the money. I followed these instructions to the
letter and it worked like a dream. All the templates are now visible
under both word and excel.

Thanks guys again, much appreciated.

Cheers
Berk McGowan
 
Your feed-back is appreciated.

This helps to clear up the question of the validity of this procedure as far
as Office 2003 is concerned.

Dave ... I would guess that the poster that you were referring to just
didn't use the correct "modus operandi".
--

Regards,

RD
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit !
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi guys,

Thanks for your responses.

RagDyer was spot on the money. I followed these instructions to the
letter and it worked like a dream. All the templates are now visible
under both word and excel.

Thanks guys again, much appreciated.

Cheers
Berk McGowan
 
That's what I hoped, too. I would have hated to see that technique disappear.

(well, it might be nice to have it in Tools|options (with a warning that it
affects Word (and ppt???), too. And same inside Word.)

I'm happy again.
 
And I should have probably given better instructions that simply change it in
word. Maybe they didn't know where--that's why it might have failed <bg>.
 
Yeah it's interesting that it's a feature that you have to set up via
word. It should be something that can be set up in any of the Office
products that use it.

I won't mention what the boss had to say about it, but it wasn't pleasant!!

Thanks again guys.

Bj
 
It is something (networking templates) that can be set up specific to the
individual program.

The only reason I suggested this particular procedure is because you had
mentioned that you had XL and Word templates in the same file.
This approach seemed the quickest way to kill two birds with the proverbial
*one* stone.

In your OP, you had stated:
<<"There appears to be an 'alternate location' path that can be
set, however, this brings up errors on startup of excel as it doesn't
recognise the .dot files that are in this share as well.">>

This "alternate location", probably from
<Tools> <Options> <General> tab (don't know exactly how 2003 uses it),
*will* work for XL templates, networked or stand-alone, but you had it
combined with Word files

There is also another way to store XL templates (network or stand-alone),
where you can create your own tabs in the <File> <New> window, so if you
have a large number of templates, you might wish to segregate them into
categories.

I know there are also procedures for Word, which I'm not familiar with.

What you did with your templates was an *Office* procedure (not strictly XL
or Word), which just happened to be anchored by MS into Word, probably
because more people have Word then have XL.
--

Regards,

RD
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit !
--------------------------------------------------------------------



Yeah it's interesting that it's a feature that you have to set up via
word. It should be something that can be set up in any of the Office
products that use it.

I won't mention what the boss had to say about it, but it wasn't pleasant!!

Thanks again guys.

Bj
 
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