At work all of our PCs are networked. Recently my PC was swapped, and since that time I have been unable to save anything into AutoCorrect. (I like to use it for my email signature, as I don’t want it on all emails, I like being able to just type in my initials and have my 5 line signature appear).
When I go through the process to save it in AutoCorrect (either in Word or in Outlook), it works fine. But when I close Outlook, I get the following pop-up:
Word cannot save changes to the Global Template because it was opened with read-only access. Do you want to save the changes in a template with a different name?
I have tried saving it, but it doesn’t appear the next time I go into Outlook.
This obviously isn’t an earthshattering problem, but it IS really annoying. Any ideas?
Does your company use a customized normal.dot file for Word? If not, delete it (Word has to be closed first) and when you launch Word it will create a new file.
I’m sorry, that was about as clear as mud, wasn’t it?
The Global Template is a file named normal.dot. Sometimes it gets corrupted and generates error messages, refuses to save auto correct entries or robs banks. If Word cannot locate normal.dot because it’s been renamed, deleted of moved, it will create a fresh and hopefully corruption-free file. Now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably be best to rename it to normal.old or normal.bad instead of deleting it. That file stores custom styles, auto text entries and macros, for example. Deleting normal.dot wouldn’t be such a good thing if you’ve any of the aforementioned items.
Close Word. Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings*your userid*\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot and rename the file. Open Word. Try adding an auto correct entry and see if Word saves the setting.
You know, I was going to suggest checking the file’s attributes first, too. Once you locate normal.dot, right click it and check to see if the Read only box is checked (you’ll find it toward the bottom of the General tab). If it is checked, uncheck it, click OK and try adding and saving an auto correct option. Word should be closed before attempting to change the attributes of normal.dot.