Can't get rid of Global Templates in Word 2010

[clhare]

We are switching to Office 2010 in a couple months and I have a copy of Word 2010 I can use to test things out.

I had copied a couple global templates (that I currently use in Word 2003) to Word 2010's STARTUP folder. When I opened Word 2010, I found that all the macros from these templates were now on the Add-Ins tab, but because I had so many toolbars, things did not appear in a usable way. I deleted the templates from the STARTUP folder, but they are still there on the Add-Ins tab. How do I get them off? I tried File > Options > Add-Ins, then selected "Templates" from the Manage box and clicked on Go. My 3 templates (that were deleted from the PC) are still listed in the "Global Templates and Add-Ins" box and are all checked. The Remove button is disabled, so I can't figure out how to get rid of these. I tried removing the checkmarks, but it doesn't get rid of these three templates. The toolbars are no longer showing on the Add-Ins tab, but the menus are. Since the templates aren't anywhere any more, I am totally confused!

Can anyone help? I have no idea how to get these off.

[clhare]

Even though I had saved the templates in one STARTUP folder (under Program Files), I found another STARTUP folder at a different path (under Documents and Settings/.../Application Data/Microsoft/Word/STARTUP) that also had these templates. Once I deleted them from that second STARTUP folder, the template names no longer show up on the Add-Ins list in Word 2010 and the toolbar macros are gone, but... the menus are still showing up!

For a minute there, I thought I was gonna figure this out myself!

[Frosty]

You should probably search for normal.dot and normal.dotm. If you delete those and let them be recreated, then your menus may disappear.

Without knowing how you created those menus (and what customizationcontext they saved menus in), I could see a scenario where your old global templates/addins created menus in the Normal context, and then left those behind.

[Paul_Hossler]

Usually if you right click in the Add Ins tab or on one of the menus, you'll get a Delete on the short cut menu.

Paul

[clhare]

Couldn't find a Delete option, but they were removed when I deleted the Normal template. When I copied my new global template files to Startup and click on the "Add-Ins" tab, I see a bunch of "Secure Zip Options". If I hover over any of them, they say "Set Secure Zip compression and security options". I have no idea what that is all about. I have macros enabled and I've also got "Trust access to the VBA project object model" checked.

I don't what setting this would refer to or how to "fix" it.

[Paul_Hossler]

my experience is that when you load a 2003 template with command bars into 2007/2010 the command bars show up in a [add In] group on the ribbon

Even after deleting the 2003 template the command bars remain behind.

When I right click on the command bar, there's a Delete option to remove the left over command bar

Sorry - No other suggestions for you. Maybe some of the Word gurus here can help

Paul

[Frosty]

At this point, I'm not sure what there is to help... Cheryl isn't describing left over toolbars, she's describing new toolbars once she copied over her new global addin template.

Obviously something about the new global addin template is doing something... but that's about all I can say, at this point. And I'm not even clear what's bad about that "something" --

Cheryl: are you looking for general strategies about how to upgrade templates? Or troubleshooting a particular template? Because if it's a specific template, you probably need to post that template or give a better description of what you want to have happen.

[Paul_Hossler]

Frosty --

OP said ...

I deleted the templates from the STARTUP folder, but they are still there on the Add-Ins tab. How do I get them off?

The only thing I'm aware of that would put something on the [Add Ins] in 2007/2010 would be a Command Bar from an older version or toolbar customizations

What else is there that exhibits that behavior?

Not challenging, only asking to learn


Cheryl -- maybe a screen shot of the ribbon and the add ins tab would clarify


Paul

[clhare]

I was able to narrow it down to one particular startup template. When I add that one to the 2010 Startup folder, I get all the "zip" things shown in the attached image.

I created a new template file and copied all the styles, autotext, and macros to the new template and tried using the new file instead. That has eliminated all the "zip" stuff. Hopefully everything still works correctly in the recreated template. I couldn't figure out any other way to deal with that. I don't know why it happened to just the one template. They all have styles, autotext, and macros in them.

[Frosty]

Paul: that is my understanding and experience as well. Although perhaps a COM addin which creates a temporary command bars could create items on the Addins tab as well.

Cheryl: this is a bit of a conceptual question, but here you go...

The commandbars collection in Word 2003 was the primary User Interface pieces. So a lot of more complicated macro projects would generally have some kind of (at least) rudimentary user interface-- whether it was a toolbar, a new menu on the Menu Bar, additional items on a right-click menu, etc.

There were a lot of different strategies to how (and when) to deploy those UI customizations.

1. Create the UI customizations by hand in your project template... connect each button and/or menu to macros in your project.
2. Create the UI customizations by code (basically, a fast version of #1), but save those changes in the template.
3. Create the UI customizations by code-- but make them *temporary* (so that each time you loaded the macro, you would dynamically create your UI customizations... and they would disappear later).

There were also different places to store customizations (including normal.dot, a global addin, an attached template, a dynamically loaded addin, a COM addin, etc).

Now, depending on how you got Word 2010 loaded onto your computer (and your personal or business infrastructure), there may have been an attempt to retain your original normal.dot (which may have had customizations).

Any and all UI customizations (barring right-click menu customizations) will show up under the Addins tab in Word 2007/2010. My guess, from that screenshot (and especially since there is *also* a SecureZIP ribbon tab), that you have some dynamic code which may be creating temporary toolbars.

Even though 2007/2010 has attempted to get rid of the old UI commandbars usage, you can still create stuff dynamically-- it just gets dumped in the Addin tab. The following code can display this...

[VBA]
Sub DemoAddingButtonToAddinTab()
Dim oCtrl As CommandBarButton

Set oCtrl = CommandBars("Menu Bar").Controls.Add(msoControlButton, , , , True)
oCtrl.Caption = "Hello World"
oCtrl.Style = msoButtonCaption
End Sub
[/vba]
You can look through that one template and see if there is anything in the AutoExec procedure which dynamically creates user interface type stuff.

You can also try cycling through all the commandbar objects (check CustomizationContext and make sure it's set to that template)... however, if this not an area you're familiar with, you may want to get some help or make sure you're not trying to adjust your only copy.

[clhare]

Ok, thanks! I will try and figure out what is in that template that might be the cause of the issue.

The code to add to the Add-Ins tab will be very helpful as well!

One other thing I noticed regarding my Startup templates is that when I close Word, I get a message that says "You have modified styles, building blocks (such as cover pages or headers), or other content that is stored in "XYZ.dot" Do you want to save changes to "XYZ.dot"?

If I say "Yes", the compatibility checker pops another message up that says in summary "Building Block and AutoText entries may lose some information" and suggests that I save in a new file format. I've tried to resave as both a .dotx and .dotm and checking the box to maintain compatibility with previous versions of Word and either way I continue to get this message. If I go ahead and try to save it as a .dotz file, it ends up telling me it's going to save it as a macro-free document.

Is there a way to save 2003 templates in 2010 that keeps the autotext entries in them intact? So far I don't like Word 2010 at all!

[Frosty]

Well, you can turn off the option to check compatibility when saving an older format document so that you don't get that message. But that would just be hiding the potential problem.

I honestly don't know all of the things the compatibility checker might be worried about-- I tend to think this is mostly just a generic message, based on the file format, rather than an indication that Microsoft thinks there is something specifically going to cause a problem in one of your autotext entries. Although the items that are most likely to get changed in the new format are floating graphics and tables (generally speaking).

The bottom line: your .dot files which contain macros/styles/autotext entries will probably be entirely compatible being used in 2010 (even as global addins). You will need to address the user interface thing (my code to demonstrate that you can put stuff in the Addins ribbon isn't meant as a solution-- just a demonstration). You need to work on creating a new user interface, because you simply don't have the same functionality available (even if you can create buttons dynamically in the Addins tab).

But to the bigger question-- there used to be two file formats:
.doc - documents
.dot - templates

Both of those file formats could contain autotext/styles/macros

In 2010, there are 4 file formats:
.docx
.docm
.dotx
.dotm

All of them can still store styles and autotext entires... but only .docm and .dotm can contain macro coding. So if you want to convert your .dot containing macros up to 2010 format, then you need to save it as a .dotm.

However, if these are templates you are deploying to other people... I would really recommend creating a new .dotm, and then importing the various items (rather than performing a Save As for an existing .dot).

There are a lot of resources which can give deeper explanations. You can find them with some google searching (and I don't want to type a dissertation on the topic)... but broadly speaking: the conversion from 2003 to 2010 is a *big* deal, and there is a lot to think about. While the old stuff will work, for the most part (apart from the User Inteface issues), if you're attempting to save it to a new format, you've got a lot of work ahead of you.

If it helps... my strategy on this has been to break some of the functionality apart... so that I would take my old global addin (which contained styles/autotext/macros/user interface items) and break it into the following:
FirmGlobalAddin.dot (my old template) is broken into:

1. FirmUI.dotm (this just contains the new ribbon user interface code, and stubby pass through routines to FirmGlobalAddin.dotm)
2. FirmGlobalAddin.dotm (this just contains the macros).
3. FirmStylesAndBuildingBlocks.dotx (this becomes my new repository for styles and autotext/building block entries).

Depending on the complexity of your project, it may simply be easier to combine FirmUI.dotm and FirmGlobalAddin.dotm into a single routine-- but breaking out my container for styles and auto text from my user interface and macro templates has been helpful. There are a LOT of changes to this version, not the least of which is the QuickStyles gallery and the conceptual issues of dealing with styles and their priorities.

[clhare]

Yes, I can see a very bumpy road ahead of me! Some of the macros in my template insert an autotext entry or change a style. Sounds like your solution re breaking the template apart is going to be the best thing to do... it will just take me awhile to figure out how to connect everything back up.

I'll have to start searching for some documentation on this but since it's all so different, I'm not quite sure what to even search for! I guess I'll start with searching for more details about .dotm and .dotx file types.

[Frosty]

You'll want to look at getting the Custom UI Editor (a google search will show a number of hits, but it's an open source product and it makes some things more simple about modifying the ribbon). There's also the ribbon area of this website that has some info in it.

I'm not sure that my solution would necessarily fit you. For me, it was a question of knowing that I was going to have to be making a lot of modifications to different pieces at different times, but there's no reason you can't keep it all in a single template either. It's more of a maintenance issue than any inherent superior design.

But first-- lots to learn. Check out greg maxey's site for information about how to modify the ribbon- he has a lot of good examples. http://gregmaxey.mvps.org

[Frosty]

One more thought... I would really focus on the ribbon first. That's the hardest item to translate. Technically, if you can get the ribbon going and connected to all your macros, then everything else you can upgrade/convert as you need. So to really simplify...
1. make a copy of your existing .dot
2. Save As to a .dotm.
3. Download the CustomUI Editor
4. Use greg maxey's website to try adding a custom tab and some buttons to connect to your existing macros
5. Play around with the various functions and see what things don't look good.

This should get you up and running. From there, as you learn more, you'll be able to define what things matter and what don't, in terms of getting it up and running in 2010. Maybe updating your styles and autotext entries don't matter at all for you.

But the user interface stuff will be the hardest (and, perhaps, the only necessary thing).

Good luck!

[clhare]

Thanks so much for the information! At least now I have a more logical place to start!

[Frosty]

No problem. For me, after learning how to manipulate and deal with the ribbon interface, my biggest (still unanswered) question has been how to handle upgrading templates. There are a number of big-picture questions related to this. I've gleaned a lot of good information by viewing some of the information MicroSystems has put together about the various strategies (and things not to forget!) in converting from Word 2003 to Word 2007/2010. They have a number of recorded webinars which gave me good info.

Depending on the needs for you company, you may or may not need to address all of the new approaches available to you in terms of formatting styles (and setting them up properly).

Plenty of people have done successful conversions to Word 2010/2007 with*out* addressing those questions. But the concept behind the QuickStyle Gallery, in terms of style use, is an interesting one. If you set your templates up well, you have the pseudo-ability to "deploy" a kind of custom toolbar to people outside of your company who also have Word 2007/2010.

This is because in addition to the styles list (which existed in prior versions of Word, and gave rudimentary ability to hide specific styles), you also have the ability to prioritize the main styles of a particular document. So you can have the quick style gallery show
Normal, Body Text, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3
And nothing else.

And then these "outside-your-company" document collaborators can work with your document well by using the right styles, rather than creating a mess of a document you've styled properly.

But, if you're not collaborating with people outside of your sandbox... none of that may matter. Or it might... because without at least addressing your company's styles (and their display priorities), that Quick Style gallery (which utilizes a *lot* of screen real estate on the home tab) becomes a jumbled ugly mess, and your end-users can easily become disenchanted with how complex the new interface is.

Our approach, currently, is to streamline the home tab down to the functions most commonly used by 90% of our end-users, create a new custom tab with the other custom functions for our firm, and then teach the end-user how well the Quick Access Toolbar can be manipulated on a daily basis in order to streamline any workflows (temporary or not) we haven't thought about in our UI design.

And that is basically the executive summary of all I know about this process! Hope it helps!

And again, good luck Cheryl!

Jason aka Frosty

[clhare]

Hi Jason,

Can you tell me where to get the Custom UI Editor? A couple links I found didn't work and I'm not sure where to find the most current version of it.

Thanks!

[Paul_Hossler]

http://openxmldeveloper.org/blog/b/o.../10/23248.aspx

THis is the version that added 2010 compatibility

Paul