Hi John
It might be worthwhile considering what happens if a user tries this.
I can get a new, blank document, choose File > Save and select the
appropriate templates folder. If I then tell Word to save my file as
"normal.dot", Word (a) saves it as a Word document (because the "Save as
type" box is still set to "Word document") and (b) names the file
"normal.dot.doc". The resulting file is a document, not a template, and
won't function as normal.dot is supposed to function. So that won't solve
the original user's problem of having text stored in normal.dot.
Alternatiavely, I can get a blank document, choose File > Save, select the
templates folder, tell Word to save the file as a template, and tell Word to
save the file as "normal.dot". I then get an error message saying "Word
cannot give a document the same name as an open document". So that won't
work for me.
As a third possibility, I could do File > New and tell Word to create a new
template and try to name it normal.dot. But when I try that, I get the same
error message as before, because Word is, of course, already using
normal.dot. So that doesn't work for me either.
Finally, even if I could easily create a new, blank document and save it
named "normal.dot", it would not function as a 'real' normal.dot. It would
not, for example, have the default autotext entries that enable me to do
things like add page numbers to headers and footers easily.
The conclusions from this are that there are two key points about
normal.dot. First, only Word can create a normal.dot. Second, there are only
two ways to edit normal.dot. In Word, use File > Open. Or in Windows
Explorer, right-click and choose Open.
Hope this helps.
Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word