Templates and Downloading Word 97 Docs

[Annalee Foster <scriptah -at- YAHOO -dot- COM>]

I have a problem brewing that may be related to our use of templates in
Word.  Does anyone have experience that contradicts or supports the
following:

We post our documents on an Intranet in .doc format (yes, we also use
.pdf).  A comment came in from the field recently that the .doc manuals
are taking too long to open (minutes). This user accesses the Intranet
across an ISDN line; others access it using a modem.

The user suggested that the problem is related to the attached template
(not Normal.dot); that his system is not only downloading the document
but is also searching for and accessing the shared drive where we store
the template, then downloading the template information separately.

Not being a guru in the many ways Word might manage custom templates, I
found this at least plausible.  I changed the template location to my
local hard drive and unchecked the "update styles automatically."  It
took the user seconds to download the document over ISDN, but didn't
improve the download time using a modem.  Was the delay simply related
to the "update styles" option?

As a local user, I've noticed the it takes Word a "long" time (7 to 15
seconds) to open a document.  I've always thought this is related to
the size of the document itself, but now wonder if it has something to
do with the template.

Recognizing that there are many reasons a document may take a long time
to download, does anyone care to share some wisdom about this issue
specific to templates?  Are we managing ours in a way that affects the
user and download times?

BTW, does someone have an address for a Word listserv?
Thanks,

Annalee


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com


 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=