Creating keyboard shortcut keys and normal.dot

I have Word 2000 and Windows XP Professional.
I have a normal.dot file that was created in Word 97 and I replaced that normal.dot with the normal.dot in my Word 2000 (system certificates/templates- hopefully I put it back in the correct place), however it would not work. When I opened up Word 2000 a dialog box popped up and said Word cannot open the existing " then showed a square, I said OK. I looked at the styles and the styles that were created with the normal.dot from Word 97 were not there. My purpose for doing this was because all the styles were already setup and the keyboard shortcut keys to go with them. How do I fix this? Since I could not figure this out, I went back to the normal.dot that came with Word 2000 and created my own styles. Now I'm trying to create keyboard shortcut keys. I went to the tools menu, clicked customize, clicked keyboard, In the sace changes box I clicked the name of the document I was working on (maybe I should of clicked normal.dot??), I clicked on the style I had created (quote) in the Categories box, click the category that contains the command or other item. In the Press new shortcut key box, I tried to type the letter q, which is what I want to use on the keyboard, however I it would not let me type anything. Am I doing this wrong?

Hi Sheila,

You picked the wrong spot for your template. (I did the same thing myself
when I first got Word 2000.) There was a change in where user templates
(including normal.dot) were stored between versions. For more on the
different kinds of templates and locations of templates folders see
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm.

I'm not sure, though, that I would use an old normal.dot file. Instead I
would try to move the customizations to another template or the new
normal.dot. See http://addbalance.com/word/movetotemplate.htm for
step-by-step instructions on moving / sharing / copying customizations
including AutoText, AutoCorrect, keyboard assignments, macros, etc.

Hope this helps,
--

Charles 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://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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"Sheila" wrote in message
...
I have Word 2000 and Windows XP Professional.
I have a normal.dot file that was created in Word 97 and I replaced that
normal.dot with the normal.dot in my Word 2000 (system
certificates/templates- hopefully I put it back in the correct place),
however it would not work. When I opened up Word 2000 a dialog box popped up
and said Word cannot open the existing " then showed a square, I said OK. I
looked at the styles and the styles that were created with the normal.dot
from Word 97 were not there. My purpose for doing this was because all the
styles were already setup and the keyboard shortcut keys to go with them.
How do I fix this? Since I could not figure this out, I went back to the
normal.dot that came with Word 2000 and created my own styles. Now I'm
trying to create keyboard shortcut keys. I went to the tools menu, clicked
customize, clicked keyboard, In the sace changes box I clicked the name of
the document I was working on (maybe I should of clicked normal.dot??), I
clicked on the style I had created (quote) in the Categories box, click the
category that contains the command or other item. In the Press new shortcut
key box, I tried to type the letter q, which is what I want to use on the
keyboard, however I it would not let me type anything. Am I doing this
wrong?

See my previous post for what I think is a general solution for you. Here
I'll try to answer some of your specific questions.

*** Now I'm trying to create keyboard shortcut keys. I went to the tools
menu, clicked customize, clicked keyboard, In the sace changes box I clicked
the name of the document I was working on (maybe I should of clicked
normal.dot??), I clicked on the style I had created (quote) in the
Categories box, click the category that contains the command or other item.
In the Press new shortcut key box, I tried to type the letter q, which is
what I want to use on the keyboard, however I it would not let me type
anything. Am I doing this wrong?


You may be thinking of shortcuts in the style dropdown rather than
traditional keyboard shortcuts. (I don't think you want to apply your quote
style everytime you press the letter q on your keyboard.) A style shortcut
is created by modifying the style. In the box with the style name, click
after the name, press the comma and then type a shortcut such as "q." Then,
when you click in the style box and type q and Enter, you'll get your style.
For more on styles and their names, see
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm.

You can apply a keyboard shortcut (not in the styles menu) to a style the
way you were, but usually people add a Ctrl or Alt modifier if they want to
be able to use the keyboard for typing.

Hope this helps,
--

Charles 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://www.mvps.org/word 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.

OK, I guess I'm really confused now. let me explain a little further because I think I'm using the wrong words.
At work we use to use Office 95 then we switched to Office 97 and all we did was replace the exiting normal.dot from 95 to 97 and we had created a folder called DOT, which contained all our company templates and I believe we put that in c\programfiles\microsoft\templates\DOT and the normal.dot outside the templates folder and everything worked great. Now I'm using 2000 and want it to do the samething. When I say things worked great, I mean I would open up the template I wanted and use shortcut keys on my keyboard like alt + h + 1 for a first header or alt + l for leading. We also had a cleanup macro which I'm assuming came from the normal.dot, but not for sure. This is what I'm trying to get back to. The only reason I was trying to create shortcut keys (example: alt + h + 1) was because I could not get the normal.dot to work, which I thought is where the shortcut keys came from. So I'm not sure how to accomplish this, but I do have the normal.dot from Word 97 and the DOT folder with the templates I need. Yikes have I lost you?

It would be helpful if you would break up your post into paragraphs. Large
blocks of text can be overwhelming.

I gave you references that should help you locate your templates. Normally
you would want to put your templates in the user templates folder, which is
where normal.dot is stored. You would create folders inside that templates
folder to organize them. One of the articles tells you how to do that. You
can try putting your old normal.dot template in the user templates folder
(with Word closed) and see how it works. Probably it will work fine.

Let me know. If that doesn't do what you need, write back and we'll get into
assigning keyboard shortcuts.
--

Charles 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://www.mvps.org/word 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.

"Sheila" wrote in message
...
OK, I guess I'm really confused now. let me explain a little further
because I think I'm using the wrong words.
At work we use to use Office 95 then we switched to Office 97 and all we
did was replace the exiting normal.dot from 95 to 97 and we had created a
folder called DOT, which contained all our company templates and I believe
we put that in c\programfiles\microsoft\templates\DOT and the normal.dot
outside the templates folder and everything worked great. Now I'm using
2000 and want it to do the samething. When I say things worked great, I
mean I would open up the template I wanted and use shortcut keys on my
keyboard like alt + h + 1 for a first header or alt + l for leading. We
also had a cleanup macro which I'm assuming came from the normal.dot, but
not for sure. This is what I'm trying to get back to. The only reason I
was trying to create shortcut keys (example: alt + h + 1) was because I
could not get the normal.dot to work, which I thought is where the shortcut
keys came from. So I'm not sure how to accomplish this, but I do have the
normal.dot from Word 97 and the DOT folder with the templates I need. Yikes
have I lost you?

Sorry for the big blocks of text.
Yes, your reference to locating templates was great. C\documents and settings\sheila\application data\microsoft\templates. I did put my folder in there of the templates that I use and it showed up when I did start\new office document. However, I could not use the shortcut keys on the keyboard that I normally would alt + H + 1.

My normal dot that came with word is also stored in the above place in templates. I took my old normal.dot and replace it with the existing one in there. Opened up Word with a template that I use and received a word dialog box that said, " Word cannot open the existing "and a picture of square box" I clicked OK and there was the template I wanted with all the styles I wanted, but cannot do the shortcut keys on the keyboard. Is the purpose of normal.dot to make these shortcuts work?
Sheila

Rename your old normal.dot normal97.dot.
Use that as the basis for a new document. Do your shortcut keys work in that
document?

--

Charles 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://www.mvps.org/word 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.

"Sheila" wrote in message
...
Sorry for the big blocks of text.
Yes, your reference to locating templates was great. C\documents and
settings\sheila\application data\microsoft\templates. I did put my folder
in there of the templates that I use and it showed up when I did start\new
office document. However, I could not use the shortcut keys on the keyboard
that I normally would alt + H + 1.

My normal dot that came with word is also stored in the above place in
templates. I took my old normal.dot and replace it with the existing one in
there. Opened up Word with a template that I use and received a word dialog
box that said, " Word cannot open the existing "and a picture of square box"
I clicked OK and there was the template I wanted with all the styles I
wanted, but cannot do the shortcut keys on the keyboard. Is the purpose of
normal.dot to make these shortcuts work?
Sheila

I renamed the file like you said and the shortcut keys did not work, however I did not get that dialog box. So it opened correctly.

Well, then you are going to have to rebuild them.

First, you'll want to copy your styles. The Move to Template article gives
instructions on using the Organizer to do this.

Then, you'll want to customize the keyboard to use your styles. I think the
example you gave was Alt + H + 1 for Heading 1 and Alt + H + 2 for Heading
2. Are you aware that there are built-in keyboard shortcuts for the first
three heading styles?
Ctrl-Alt-1 for Heading 1
Ctrl-Alt-2 for Heading 2
Ctrl-Alt-3 for Heading 3
Do you need more than that?
--

Charles 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://www.mvps.org/word 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.

"Sheila" wrote in message
...
I renamed the file like you said and the shortcut keys did not work,
however I did not get that dialog box. So it opened correctly.

I printed out the move to template article so I could read it and figure it out.

I was not aware of the build-in keyboard shortcuts. I did the 3 you listed and it worked fine. What are all the build-in shortcuts. I need a lot more than that. Some examples Heading up to 9, (a) alpha listing, (1) numerical listing, 1st bullet, 2nd dash, 3rd diamond, 4th dash, leading, note TOC, etc. If I can find out what is currently available then maybe I will not have to rebuild some. I guess there is no difference in Ctrl-Alt-1 or Alt-H-1 other than learning what keys to press. Is it is a lot of work to make them Alt-H-1 instead of Ctrl-Alt-1? If so, I'll memorize again.

I did notice that I do not have the cleanup macro anymore that was used with 97. I use highlight the document, tools, macro, macros and then in the list there use to be one called cleanup. I do not see that anymore. How do I accomplish that?
Thank you so much for helping me with this, I really appreciate it.