At the office, we're running NT4.0 and Word 6.0 on a bunch of interconnected networks.  They even have that freaky Tivoli software that allows the techs to take control of your computer remotely.

I've noticed several times now that a couple of document templates in Word,  where I have specified "first page" from Tray 1 and "other pages" from Autoselect, they mysteriously get reset to "First page" from default (autoselect).

Now this happens at some time when I don't notice it because it may be days (or more) before I go to print the documents I create from these templates.


The first time, I thought I was just losing it.

The second time, I realized it wasn't just my imagination.

The third time, it was really bizarre, and now I'm thinking either there's an undetected virus that Innoculan is not catching that messes the templates up, or there is some weird "push" they are doing that resets them, or that one of my co-workers is screwing with my computer.

Next week I am going to set a power-on password to take care of the last possibility, but has anyone else ever had this experience?

I set the template up this way to get the printer to select letterhead for the first page and plain paper for the remaining pages automatically.  Other people accomplish this by setting their documents to require manual feed on the first page.

This only happens to new documents once the change has crept into the document.  So far, I haven't noticed any existing documents getting this trouble.


Has anyone else had this happen or have an explanation??  

Should I buy more aluminum foil?

My first impression is that for some reason Word is reverting back to the default 'normal.dot' template. You may have done this but...Open the normal.dot template(File/Open/select file type .dot), make the paper selection changes you want then save it as 'normal.dot'. This could solve your problem. You could make a backup of the original normal.dot just in case you want to revert back. Also, if you can, save your templates in a non standard location. A Tivoli push shouldn't overwrite your profile 'stuff'. It is normally 'told' to put this file in this location. We used to use Tivoli but someone got the brilliant idea to start using SMS...sheesh.

As for co-workers accessing your stuff, NT is supposed to be secure, well, unless the local admin password(or your password, change it often!) has been discovered. Well, there are quite a few ways around that actually.[}:D]
You can see who has logged into your computer by looking in the profiles folder.

Good luck, I hope this helps!!


ByteTheBullet  (-:

I Forgot to mention that this is not happening with the normal.dot, but with a copy that I had tweaked the way I wanted it and saved under another name.  It's used with a macro connected to a toolbar button, and the macro checks out fine.

The thing that's really bizarre is that I had a backup copy and either it got changed, too, OR the change had taken place before I made the copy and I just hadn't noticed it because I hadn't printed any letters based on that template.

Aaaaaargh!!!!

I think I'll just make the changes I need and forget about it, but it bugs me that this can happen and no-one thre can tell me why.  In fact, I think they kinda are thinking "yeah," sure it did."

One word, "Virus", explained by two words: "Microsoft Sucks"....

And innoculan is one of the worst AV products around... In fact, it's a canceled product (Computer Associates has a new AV 'subscription project')...

A software vendor who makes US Airport security seem tight combined with an old AV product (even with new data files) = recipe for disaster...

The best way around it is to disable all macros in all MS apps, uninstall 'Windows Scripting Host', and your company needs to get a decent (McAfee or Symantec) AV product....

- Dave Acklam
 (I may be new to guns, but computers... That I know)...

Or your network settings (especially if you use Novell at your office) are set to log you in locally as administrator... Dumb, yes. Common, yes... Or someone guessed your password, or got on your PC when you walked away for a while...