Perhaps a more advanced question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Seann
  • Start date Start date
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Seann

I'm somewhat familiar with Word (I've used it since vs. 2) but can't seem to
figure out an answer for this one.

Under file>properties>summary, there is the "save preview picture" which is
by default unchecked.

Is there a way to have the box checked by default?

I've thought of editing normal.dot, but viewing it under tools, styles has
no place to do this. -- the only other alternative I can think of is to
make a copy of normal.dot, make the changes there, save the copy, then
through explorer, rename it so the changes will be default in word.

I am using Word 2002 (xp?).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
 
In order to do this, you would need to open Normal.dot for editing (for
instructions, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CustomizeNormalTemplate.htm), but
this is a genuinely bad idea. When any template has this option enabled,
every document based on it will have the option enabled, which is is your
purpose, but you really don't want to do this, for two reasons:

1. Adding a preview picture dramatically increases file size.

2. Adding a preview picture to a template can be helpful if the first page
of the template has graphics or other elements that make it immediately
recognizable (and that can't be conveyed by the name of the template), but
that is often not the case, and (as stated above) if the option is enabled
in the template, you will have to disable it in every document you create.

3. Adding a preview picture to a document is even less useful. Note that
this does *not* create a "thumbnail" that you can see in Thumbnail view. The
preview it creates is visible only in Preview view, and in that view it is
actually less helpful than what you see if you have not created a preview
picture. You can test this for yourself. In Preview view, you will see that
documents saved with previews display only the first page, reduced to a size
that is usually unreadable (this can be greatly enlarged by maximizing the
File Open window, however). For documents saved without previews, you get a
scrollable window into the entire document. You can read the entire text of
the document (not just the first page, which often has no useful information
on it). The only case in which this is not satisfactory is when tables are
involved; you can only see the left edge (since the text is wrapped to the
window and scrollable only vertically), though again, maximizing the dialog
can help there.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
As an additional note, even though the document Preview for documents
containing may not be satisfactory, if you save a Preview picture and
the first page of the document contains a table then that's worse
depending on how the table has been formatted.

For example if the table contains a dashed or dotted border then
saving a Preview picture will cause the document file size to bloat. I
saved a document containing a 3 x 2 table with a dashed border.
Without the Preview picture the file size as 24kb. With a Preview
picture it jumped to 249kb.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
Thanks for the backup and statistics on this, Beth.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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