TIP: HP computers and Office 2000

Just to reiterate (it's probably been dealt with before but anyways... a reminder is sometimes nice ) ,a small tip when using MS Office 2000 on a HP computer. If you start encountering problems with Word/Excel etc at some point try checking your normal.dot file under your office templates. If it has grown to over 26-27 KB in size, just delete it. Don't worry Office will create a new normal.dot file automatically next time you open a program.

Not sure why, but this problem seems to occur on HP's more frequently than any other computer I've used. Don't seem to have this problem with clones only HP's/Compaq's. Anyways if your wondering why you office seems bogged down or starts freezing up check this file size first, it could save you some time instead of uninstalling/reinstalling Office. Not sure about Office XP as haven't used it but it may pertain to that one as well.

 

I don't think the statement is valid, Got. Sorry. I've had all kinds of PCs, and did 5 years of software support to 100s of companies using all kinds of PCs. I'm also considered somewhat of a Word expert.

I don't think your statement is valid for several reasons.

1---it is not something that occurs only on HPs or even predominantly on HPs. That may be YOUR experience. It more likely has something to do with the setup that you're using and/or if you're ghosting your PCs.

2---the normal.dot file has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the operation of Excel or any other Office application. Deleting normal.dot will have no effect on the operation of Excel.

3---the size of normal.dot is almost completely dependent upon the customization that's been done to it. I may have 50 macros that I use regularly, and those macros are stored in my normal.dot file. I may have hundreds of autotext entries, and those are also stored in normal.dot.

4---90% of the time that normal.dot becomes "corrupt" it is because the user did something to make this occur. Many times it's not corrupt at all and does not contain macro viruses, except that someone who does not completely understand normal.dot ASSUMES that the problem must be due to the software and not due to some problem between the keyboard and the chair.

5---When all Office applications are "bogging down", it is likely to do with the lack of care of the hard drive than anything else.

www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm

and the most important part of that is keeping that TEMP folder clean.

6. Telling people to arbitrarily delete normal.dot could wipe all of their saved toolbar settings, saved macros, saved autotext, etc. You just might have someone after you for telling them to do that, instead of renaming.

After you've cleaned up your hard drive, if you still have problems with Word, follow the troubleshooting steps at:

www.theofficeexperts.com/word.htm


After you've cleaned up your hard drive, if you still have problems with Excel, follow the troubleshooting steps at:

www.theofficeexperts.com/excel.htm


Tips don't go here either. LOL! They go in the here:

http://forums.techguy.org/f25/s95f83de8f22de5c59f82e1bfe9ac1ad5


Got: I really DO appreciate your intentions! Don't get me wrong, okay?

 

Thanks for the info. Wasn't sure about the Excel thing thought it was only Word that used it for Macros and settings. Anyways it has been my experience that this only seems to occur with Word and HP computers, we have 3 offices and the only comps that experience problems is...you guessed it...the HP/Compaq's. It's even listed on HP's help pages if you can find it, and it fixes it everytime. And oh right forgot about the tips section sorry about that First time posting a tip, lol. Your right about the corrupt thing....we have our HP's set up as publicly accessed client computers....so there you go right there... lol