I have to help my brother-in-law a lot when he’s working with spreadsheets and documents. Just when I think I don’t know a whole lot about computers and software, he’ll go and foul something up in a new and different way that amazes me. I constantly have to go in and reconstruct spreadsheets for him because he inadvertently erases formulas and doesn’t understand the “undo” function.
Anyway, he works in Word a lot to type up employee memos, menus, disciplinary write-ups, etc. Beginning some time a couple weeks ago, everytime he opens the program, a previous document appears. The header still says “document 1”.
He has to physically select all, hit delete, then type his stuff. The next time he opens Word, though, the same previous stuff is there.
My guess is that he somehow changed a document he was working on into the template (or whatever) that normally brings up a clean, blank screen. How do I make it so that “document 1” comes up blank?
I know I haven’t been very clear explaining this, but I can’t seem to figure out how to convey it in writing.
Sometimes one can corrupt the default template “normal.dot”
All you have to do is delete “normal.dot” and Word will generate a fresh one for you the next time you start Word.
This cures a large number of unusual conditions.
On my ancient work machine (Win2000, Office2000), this file is found here:
C:\Documents and Settings<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
However, in order to avoid having to do this again and again, how does one “corrupt the default template”? Is it as simple as hitting ctrl + a particular key accidentally? Did he click on the wrong thing at some vital point? How can he keep from doing it again?
Sometimes your asked if you would like to save changes to “normal.doc”, but I don’t remember what prompts it. You could set the "normal.dot property to read only and he won’t be able to save it, if he changes it.
You should be able to protect cells on your spreedsheets, so he can’t mess them up either. The key is to look under help for “protect cells”.
Well, I’m always providing the ii, but I still haven’t found anyone to bring it home with a V-i combo to end on a pleasing minor chord.
My namesake is one of tension, certainly not a place one lingers, so it is a shame to end a thread with me.
