Setting up Microsoft Word your way
April 22, 2007 Posted by Jeff in : DIY, How-to, Microsoft, Tips , trackback,
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When you open Microsoft Word, do you find yourself repeating the same ritual? Changing margin sizes, changing to Print view, adding tab settings, setting a default font, etc.? Isn’t it annoying? Well, you can set it so don’t have to do this every time - just change your normal.dot file. What the heck is that? It’s the default document that Word uses when you start it up. You can customize it any way you want. Here’s what you do:
1. Close all open Word docs, and exit the program.
2. Open Word using the program icon, not an existing doc.
3. Make any and all changes you want to the document layout. These are the changes that you want every document to start off with (i.e., don’t add your company logo unless you always want your company logo on the page).
4. When you are satisfied, save it to
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates with the name normal.doc (username being the name you log on to your computer with).
5. Close Microsoft Word.
6. Open My Computer, and navigate your way to
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
7. Rename the file called normal.dot to oldnormal.dot (this keeps it as a backup), and rename your normal.doc to normal.dot.
Now when you open Word, you will automatically have the changes you like already in place.
You can also make your own templates for other things, and place them in the same folder. For example, I have a couple of different stationery templates, one for my business and one for personal use. I saved the templates to that same directory as a “.dot†file instead of a “.doc†file. When you open a .dot file and make changes, Word to force you to save it as a new .doc when you go to save it; that way, you don’t mess up your original template. Now the next time you open Word, and go to File > New, you will see all of your templates.
That’s it!
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