Charles Kenyon had a pretty decent asnwer to what makes
it grow. Unless you control it, a lot of "things" you
save go into the norma.dot. It's sort of a "global"
template.
When there are several users, who don't know that
normal.dot saves thing to itself, it can grow easily.
More important than the normal.dot being 189k is the
fact that, if several users are using the same
normal.dot, which they shouldn't be doing, you can end
up with some confusing results because things you've
set in it, change seemingly without reason.
If you have the wherewithal, you should set
accounts/whatever so that each person has their own
normal.dot. Either that, or enforce a set of rules for
them to work by.
A little inspection of the template
functions/abilities will helpyou understand it. Word's
Help does a fair to poor job of explaining it, but it's
there and does have the info you need for an overall
understanding. The following is from Help's Answer
Wizard for "normal.dot":
---------------------------------------------------
About templates
Every Microsoft Word document is based on a template. A
template determines the basic structure for a document
and contains document settings such as AutoText
entries, fonts, key assignments, macros, menus, page
layout, special formatting, and styles.
Global templates, including the Normal template,
contain settings that are available to all documents.
Document templates, such as the memo or fax templates
in the Templates dialog box, contain settings that are
available only to documents based on that template.
Note The hyperlink in this topic goes to the Web. You
can switch back to Help at any time. For more templates
and wizards, visit the Microsoft Office Template
Gallery.
Global templates
When you work on a document, you can typically use only
the settings stored in the template attached to the
document or in the Normal template. To use any such
items that are stored in another template, you can load
the other template as a global template. After you load
a template, items stored in that template are available
to any document during the remainder of the Word
session.
Add-ins and templates that you load are unloaded when
you close Word. To load an add-in or template each time
you start Word, copy the add-in or template to the
Microsoft Office Startup folder.
Document templates
Templates you save in the Templates folder appear on
the General tab in the Templates dialog box. If you
want to create custom tabs for your templates in the
Templates dialog box, create a new subfolder in the
Templates folder and save your templates in that
subfolder. The name you give that subfolder will appear
on the new tab.
When you're saving a template, Word switches to the
User templates location (Tools menu, Options command,
File Locations tab), which by default is the Templates
folder and its subfolders. If you save a template in a
different location, the template will not appear in the
Templates dialog box.
Any document (.doc) file that you save in the Templates
folder also acts as a template.
Regards,
PopS
