Bits'n'Bytes

As heard on CJCD

Episode 47

I've had a couple of customers call me for help because they thought their Microsoft Word program had become corrupted. And, I guess, they were sort of right, but the problem was no where near as bad as they thought it was. The problem they were having was that any time they opened up Microsoft Word, a document they had created months or weeks earlier appeared. The page wasn't blank, like it's supposed to be.

What happened was, what's called the Normal template for Microsoft Word had been accidentally overwritten. By accidentally saving a file called Normal dot d-o-t they'd corrupted the template file Microsoft Word uses to open with a blank page.

To fix this type of problem, open Word and delete everything that shows up in the document. Now click on File and pick Save As. In the "Save as type" section at the bottom of the window, change the type to d-o-t, for document template, instead of the d-o-c, for Word Document that appears there. Name the file "Normal". Now, when you do this Word automatically wants to save the document in its template folder, but you can't save the Normal template in there. So, switch where you save the file to somewhere you can find again - on your desktop, or in your My Documents folder.

Now close Microsoft Word. Find the Normal dot d-o-t file you just created, right click on it and pick Copy. Now, go to your My Computer icon, and open it. Click on Tools, Folder Options, and View and make sure the Show hidden files and folders option is checked, then click OK. Now, double click on each of these: Local Disk C, Documents and Settings, whatever your username is, Application Data, Microsoft, Templates. Right click on white space in the folder and pick Paste. When it says are you sure? Click yes or OK.

That's it, the problem is fixed! Close everything and open Word to be sure, but now the page should be blank again.

Stay tuned next week when I talk about Instant Messaging programs.

I’m Computer Dave, thanks for your time.