RE: New Templates

["Chinell, David F \(GE Indust, Security\)" <David -dot- Chinell -at- GE -dot- com>]

Claire:

People say this a lot, but it's not exactly accurate.

If the document is based on Normal.dot, the only way the template definition of the Normal paragraph style will affect the document definition is if Tools > Templates and Add-ins > "Automatically update document styles" is checked.

If the document is not based on Normal.dot there is simply no easy way the document's Normal style will be in any way impacted by the definition stored in Normal.dot.

While I too follow the suggestion to avoid Normal as a base, the only ill effect I've ever seen is that the Mark Index Entry dialog box has text boxes that are formatted using Normal. If the document's Normal has too much space above, or too great a left margin, the text in these boxes is not visible.

Bear


-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+david -dot- chinell=ge -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]On
Behalf Of Claire Conant
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 2:26 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: New Templates


My experience has been just the opposite. As an editor, any template
that I am responsible for gets the "based on Normal style" option
removed. I base absolutely nothing on Normal. In fact, I believe this is
recommended by the Microsoft Word MVPs. I also never use Normal style in
a document, but then, we also don't use RoboHelp. 

My experience has taught me that "Normal" is different on each computer,
therefore what looks fine on my computer may change unexpectedly when
viewed on a different computer. Hence, Geoff's law of unintended
consequences. 

I usually base a style on no style or none, unless it makes sense to do
so. I think Geoff gave some very good examples. 

Claire Conant
Technical Editor
Digeo, Inc.

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