When you uninstall a Microsoft Office application *ALL* your personal
settings on the hard drive and in the registry are retained. Uninstalling
rarely achieves anything useful in correcting application errors as almost
invariably the problems are related to corruptions of your personal data.
When you re-install the application, your personal settings are re-adopted.
It is a system intended to maintain your personalisations over updates.
One of the principal user files is the normal template - here normal.dotm.
Deleting or better still renaming that template will cause Word to build a
new default one.
To check out this premise start Word in its safe mode (hold the CTRL key
whilst starting and positively acknowledge the ensuing prompt). You will get
a pared down version of Word that doesn't use your personal settings. If
that fixes your problem, then rename the normal template and see if it
remains fixed. If so, job done. If not, see
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm then
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm or
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541 which while not specifically aimed at
Windows 7 are equally relevant to it.
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site
www.gmayor.com
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ray mc said:
Please help me understand - When I uninstall an application, is there some
where in my computer that saves my info in that app. so when i reinstall
it
returns, and if so, how can you clear everything when uninstalling so that
potential problems can be repaired with a clean install of the
application?
Also I found the normal.dotm, but do not understand what to do from there?
Doug Robbins - Word MVP said:
No, none of the things (your data) that you mention are affected by
uninstalling and reinstalling the application.
The normal.dotm template will be located in your user templates folder
which
in Vista/Windows7 will be located at
C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates
in Windows XP it will be at
C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates
--
Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
Please reply only to the newsgroups unless you wish to obtain my services
on
a paid professional basis.
I have windows 7 ultimate, Office small business 2007. I posted the
other
day
about my documents being created in an encriypted format, which I
cannot
change. I was advised thru this board to rename normal.dotm to reset
the
default settings. I have no idea how to do that or what that means, so
I
thought I would just uninstall office and start over. I went into add
and
remove programs and uninstalled office and I no longer had any office
applications. When I reinstalled Office, I noticed I still had the same
problem and also all the documents stored under the office button in
word
and
excel were still there. I also did not lose any of my e-mails or
contacts
in
Outlook!
I don't understand, should'nt everything have been cleared? Please
help
.
