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MS Office Forum / Word / Programming / November 2005problem with non-existing templates
Hi everyone, I have a huge problem with a bunch of Word documents. They're all based on a template which does no longer exist. Due to this it takes Word about half a minute to open one of them. I need to remove this link from the files. I know I can programmatically change the linked template back to normal.dot with AttachedTemplate but the problem is that I would have to open every single document using the Documents.Open method which again takes Word quite some time as mentioned above. As I'm a novice to VBA I wonder if there is any way to tell Word's COM object not to look for the non-existing template. I've already tried using Microsoft's dsofile.dll but it seems like it's not capable of WRITING the template-attribute. The only solution I can see right now is to disable LAN access on my machine while converting the files which I don't consider to be a proper solution for the problem ;-) Hope anyone of you can help me with this. Thanks in advance. jarod1701@gmx.de was telling us: jarod1701@gmx.de nous racontait que : > Hi everyone, > [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > > Thanks in advance. You could create a temporary *.dot with the actual name in the actual location your documents are expecting to find the template; then run the macro to change the AttachedTemplate. At least, in this manner documents will open normally and the process may run fairly fast. Use the code at: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm to set up the batch process, but change the Find/Replace code with he code to change the attached template.  SignatureSalut! _______________________________________ Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org You could also include in it a document_open event which automatically changed the attached template so that it would eventually fall into misuse without any further action on your part. -- Enjoy, Tony > jarod1701@gmx.de was telling us: > jarod1701@gmx.de nous racontait que : [quoted text clipped - 39 lines] > jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO > Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org First of all, thanks to both of you. @Jean-Guy: I already thought about that. The problem is that the application I'm supposed to write will be used sporadically by different people. This makes it quite difficult to "rebuild" the directory structure everytime. @Tony: As I already mentioned I'm quite new to VBA. Wouldn't the Document_Open event only fire when it's alread "too late" ? Anyway, I'll try that of course. jarod1701@gmx.de was telling us: jarod1701@gmx.de nous racontait que : > First of all, thanks to both of you. > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > makes it quite difficult to "rebuild" the directory structure > every time. In that case, if you provide a dummy template and put it in your users' "User Templates" folder, Word will find it (Word always find a document's template in the "User Templates," "Workgroup Templates" and "Default Template" folders. Knowing this, it is easy to distribute templates and not worry about exact paths as long as users use one of those three folders) and I believe it will be faster than trying to look for a non-existing template in a non-existing path. I do not have a network with which to try it, but it would not take you long to test it. SignatureSalut! _______________________________________ Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org I just tried that. I put a dummy template in my user templates folder and renamed it to the corresponding name. The only difference is that Word now automatically applies the new path to the document's AttachedTemplate property but it still takes it about 30 seconds to open the doc. It was a cool idea nonetheless. jarod1701@gmx.de was telling us: jarod1701@gmx.de nous racontait que : > I just tried that. I put a dummy template in my user templates folder > and renamed it to the corresponding name. The only difference is that > Word now automatically applies the new path to the document's > AttachedTemplate property but it still takes it about 30 seconds to > open the doc. It was a cool idea nonetheless. This means Word first tries to resolve the current AttachedTemplate Path. Unless the Path is available, I don't know how you can force Word to ignore that path... See the discussion at: http://tinyurl.com/8utpd for some other explanations and or ideas. By the way, I do not think you ever mentioned your version of Word... SignatureSalut! _______________________________________ Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org Word looks first in the same directory as the document - I can't remember all the rest of the search order off the top of my head - because that allows you to package up a document and its template to, say, e-mail to someone else and for them to have the correct template. So create a template (with the right name) in the folder with your docs - and add something like this to its ThisDocument module Private Sub Document_Open() If ActiveDocument.Type = wdTypeDocument Then _ ActiveDocument.AttachedTemplate = NormalTemplate End Sub -- Enjoy, Tony > jarod1701@gmx.de was telling us: > jarod1701@gmx.de nous racontait que : [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] > jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO > Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org Tony Jollans was telling us: Tony Jollans nous racontait que : > Word looks first in the same directory as the document - I can't > remember all the rest of the search order off the top of my head - > because that allows you to package up a document and its template to, > say, e-mail to someone else and for them to have the correct template. I do not remember the search order as well, especially since it seems to change slightly according to the version. But, I always thought that the first place Word looked was the path associated with the AttachedTemplate, if that fails, then comes the local folder, then User, Workgroup, Default, etc. This means that the 30 second delay will still be there, no? SignatureSalut! _______________________________________ Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org I just ran a quick test in 2003 to confirm - Document in Folder A based on Template in Folder B Copied Template to Folder A and also to User Templates Folder Opened document and it used the local template (and successfully changed the attached template to normal) Saved and re-opened document and it no longer opened any copy of the original template. (All on local computer so can't say for sure it's not looking for something else but I'm pretty sure it isn't) -- Enjoy, Tony > Tony Jollans was telling us: > Tony Jollans nous racontait que : [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO > Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org first of all thanks to all of you, I'm afraid there is no really "nice" way to solve my problem. Shame over Microsoft for this really annoying bug :-) Microsoft are far from perfect but this could hardly be called a bug! You (perhaps not you personally, but your company) have deleted a template (or the server it was on). Word looks for what it has been told to use and when it can't find it, uses an alternative so that you can still work with your document - seems a pretty good compromise to me. I'll grant it can be slow doing this but that isn't under the control of Word - it's the network. Have you tried my suggestion of putting a dummy template in the same directory as the documents? Did it not work - or is there some reason that you think it won't work for you? -- Enjoy, Tony > first of all thanks to all of you, > > I'm afraid there is no really "nice" way to solve my problem. > Shame over Microsoft for this really annoying bug :-) Hi Tony, It's annoying that one cannot remove the link to the template programmatically WITHOUT openig the document first. Your suggestion concerning the dummy template didn't work for me. I think that is because Word first tries to find the original template which non longer exists and after that looks for it in the doc's parent folder. I'm sorry it doesn't work. I've always understood that the first place Word looks for templates is in the folder with the document and it has always done that for me. Maybe there's an option somewhere that I've always got switched on somehow, or maybe there's something else causing your problem. I do understand your frustration and I know you have said you don't consider it a proper solution, but logging off from the network while you run a batch process would be another way of doing what you want. -- Enjoy, Tony > Hi Tony, > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > which non longer exists and after that looks for it in the doc's parent > folder. Note. The dummy template needs to have the same name as the original template. SignatureCharles Kenyon Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome! --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn from my ignorance and your wisdom. > Hi Tony, > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > which non longer exists and after that looks for it in the doc's parent > folder. After struggling with a few other approaches I solved my problem the "simple" way: I added the server formerly holding the templates to my local hosts file using an IP address of an existing server. Word can now "reach" the server and opens the documents within a second. You might also want to put something in for when a user creates a new document based on the dummy template, such as creating a new document based on normal.dot instead. SignatureCharles Kenyon Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome! --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn from my ignorance and your wisdom. > Word looks first in the same directory as the document - I can't remember > all the rest of the search order off the top of my head - because that [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] >> jmarcilREMOVE@CAPSsympatico.caTHISTOO >> Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org |
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