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> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-219327 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-
> 219327 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Brian Gordon
> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 2:22 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Adobe Acrobat 6.0 VS WORD 2003
>
>
> You can't really avoid normal.dot, as I recently
> discovered to my dismay. It is active with every
> instance of Word, and can be customised, causing
> differences in the doc on each computer it is opened
> on.
>
> All the best,
> Brian
>
> --- Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi Ken,
> >
> > Are you familiar with Word templates? I think that
> > most professional
> > tech writers who work in Word create their own
> > templates and avoid using
> > normal.dot.
> >
>
As I said to Dan in an off-list reply, someday, somehow, some way Word's
sinister "normal.dot" will come up and bite you in the hindquarters. And
I stand my previous statement that the only way they're ever going to
fix it is if they get rid of that contemptible thing. However, I can't
see how they could do so, given that so much electronic correspondence,
documentation, and other written material has been created in Word over
the years. If they abandoned normal.dot in some future release of Word,
how would it be able to open documents created in legacy versions of the
program?
I've used Word since about 1992 and I've even held certifications in the
program over the years. I've created templates for everything from
training manuals to business letters and I've never found a version
where sooner or later something happened where my computer screwed up a
document someone sent to me in Word, or someone else's computer screwed
up a document I sent out in Word because of that "normal.dot" issue. And
Brian, what is really frightening, is that sometimes normal.dot can get
updated and changed without the user realizing that he or she is doing
it. It's bad enough if someone could mess it up intentionally--it's
really scary when the thing starts mutating on its own... :-(
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