Salvaging Corrupted Normal.Dot

[MWE]

I believe that my Normal.Dot file is corrupted. There are too many things that are not working correctly. In particular, I removed several forms that were not acting correctly; when I tried to recreate them from scratch I could not use the original form names. It seems that although the forms appear to have been deleted, some (hidden) legacy is still there including the original names.

I can export forms, code modules, etc and then restore them to a new Normal.Dot. But is there a way to save any of the customization "settings" and any menus that were created using the manual "Customize" approach.

Thanks

[fumei]

This is a very good example of why you should not put anything into normal.dot. Normal.dot DOES get corrupt. There is no reason why forms, or macros, or autotext to go into normal.dot. It is a bad, bad idea.
So...

I can export forms, code modules, etc and then restore them to a new Normal.Dot. But is there a way to save any of the customization "settings" and any menus that were created using the manual "Customize" approach.

Don't DO that. Do not put them into another normal.dot. This is even more true if you are doing a lot of forms, or code, or customization. Leave normal.dot alone!

Export your forms into another template and load it globally.

As for exporting manually configured menu customization? ...hmmmm...I don't think so.

[TonyJollans]

Personally I think corruption of normal.dot does not happen anything like as often as is claimed (although from the sound of some of your problems it may well be that you do have corruption). Just because deleting it appears to solve a problem does not mean it was corrupt. It's a bit like scrapping your car because it won't go anywhere - getting a new one (with a full tank) may solve a problem in the short term but in a couple of hundred miles you might have the same problem again: you've got to learn (a) that a car needs fuel and (b) how to read the fuel guage. So it is with normal. If you don't understand it you're never going to get it to do what you want.

I fully endorse what Gerry says - use your own global template rather than Normal - but that doesn't really answer your question. There is a "Save My Settings" Wizard but I'm not sure about the Office 2000 implementation (which I think I recall you saying in another thread was your version). Maybe a google will turn up something.

You can use the Organiser to copy a lot of things and a great many settings are held in the registry, not normal, anyway. Formatted AutoCorrects, for example, will fall through the cracks unless you take explicit action but it may be more trouble than its worth trying to write something yourself. Again, Google may be your friend.

[fumei]

Good one Tony. Yeah, I doubt that normal gets "corrupt" - in the real sense - as much as it get "misunderstood".

[MWE]

Thanks for the suggestions and mentoring. I won't take offense, but others might.

I am pretty sure Normal.dot is a mess -- whether it is corrup or not may not be the issue. As long as I leave it where it is and what it is, Word is erratic

I did try using a global template in the past, when it was suggested that Normal.dot was not a good place to store procedures, but I was never able to get it to work the way I wanted or really work at all. In particular:
1. I could not find a way to have it "open" (so I could fiddle with code) when anything else was open. A global template is "available" and in some sense opened when Word opens if the template is in the Word StartUp directory. But I can not do anything with it. Based on my previous exploration of how global templates worked, they are closed except when explicitly opened.
2. code that seemed to run fine when part of a code module in the parent word file or when in Normal.dot did not run when it was in a global template. I would get an error, but since the global template is closed, I could not find out anything about what proc had failed, what the problem was, where the error was, etc. I would put the "module" back in Normal.dot or the parent word file and the code was fine (again).
3. code in the global template that used objects or functions from another MS appl library did not work; it was as though the global template did not recognize any dlls except those normally associated with Word even though they were explicitly referenced (VBAE|Tools|References...) in the word parent.

What I want is for the global template to work like Personal.xls in Excel.