Hi, Bill,
Unless you've specifically saved your AutoText entries to another template,
they're all stored in the global template named Normal.dot.
If you're doing a direct upgrade -- that is, installing Office XP on top of
Office 97 without uninstalling the old software first -- then the installer
will keep the old Normal.dot. The first time you use the new version, the
AutoText you had before will still be there. To be cautious, back up
Normal.dot (and everything else on your disk!) before you start the upgrade.
If you're going to uninstall the old Office, reboot, and then install a
fresh copy of the new version -- which I recommend -- then save a copy of
the old Normal.dot file in a different folder and with a different name
(such as oldNormal.dot), as well as backing up all data files. After you
install Office XP, start Word. [1] Go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins,
click the Organizer button, and go to the AutoText tab. One side of the
Organizer dialog shows the new Normal.dot and the other side shows the
current document. Under the document window, click the Close File button. It
changes to Open File; click it again. Navigate to the oldNormal.dot location
and open it. Highlight all the AutoText entries and click the Copy button.
While you're there, you can also transfer any macros, toolbars, and styles
from the old template to the new one.
[1] I recommend the Organizer method instead of simply copying the old
Normal.dot into the Templates folder to overwrite the new Normal.dot. This
is really just to avoid bringing along old crud you don't want, on the
assumption that this is why you're doing a clean install instead of an
upgrade.
