PAST MEETINGS

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Topic:	Configuring Word 2002 for a Rollout
Presenter:	Jill Krogmann and Doug Daniel Sage Solutions Group (jkrogmann@sagesol.com)
Host:	Tas Ibrahim Kutak Rock LLP 10th Floor (Suite 1000) 1101 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. (SunTrust/Soho Building) Washington, DC 20036 202-828-2496

Jill Krogmann from Sage Solutions Group lead us through the maze of Word's tools/options settings and discussed which were the best or worst for a legal environment. She also talked about how to design and where to store your Global templates as well as where options are stored—registry vs. template. In addition, she covered how to use the tools in the Office XP Resource Kit to prepare Office XP for firm-wide deployment.

Pam Thompson gleaned the following tips and tricks from Jill’s presentation. If you have more to add, please email her:

Gather a focus group of employees to identify firm settings and styles.

In the normal template, store customized styles, Page Setup choices (e.g. margins), and many of the Tools... Options... as well as Tools... Customize... features discussed below.

In a global template, store customized menus and toolbar buttons.

Global templates should be stored on the user's hard drive under either of the Startup folder options. Consider developing a login script that copies any updated templates to the user's PC.

If you use the policy wizards in the Office Resource Kit, you can lock down a lot of the options within Word in such a way that the user can’t change them again.

When altering Heading styles in the normal template, change the name slightly—e.g. "_ab_Heading1,H1". The underscore at the beginning ensures that the style will order to the top of the list. The firm’s initials (e.g. "ab") ensures that your styles won’t be accidentally overwritten by a client’s customizations in Word. The comma and abbreviation (e.g. ",H1") allows users to apply the style quickly by typing Ctrl+Shift+S and this abbreviation. You might also consider setting keystrokes for the customized styles, such as Ctrl+Alt+1 for _ab_Heading1.

Jill suggested the following changes to the defaults in Word XP (2002):

MENUS

File menu:
Remove—Versions (especially if you have a document management program)
Remove—Save as Web Page (debatable because this feature can be used to recover corrupted documents as suggested by MVP Dave Rado)
Remove—Web Page Preview
Change—Page Setup left and right margin defaults to 1"
Edit menu:
(no suggestions)
View menu:
Remove—Web layout
Remove—Document Map (debatable; but recommended by MVP Dave Rado who says this feature can corrupt documents)
Remove—Master Documents
Remove—Markup (especially if you have Delta View or similar)
Change—break Headers and Footers into two separate menu items
Insert menu:
Remove—Page Numbers
Remove—Web Components
Change—move the Reference sub-menu items up to the main Insert menu
Format menu:
Remove—Background (web feature)
Remove—Themes (web feature)
Remove—Frames (web feature)
Remove—AutoFormat
Tools menu:
Remove—Fix Broken Text (See MSKB-260162 for info on this feature)
Remove—Online Collaboration
Change—Letters & Mailings by either adding the classic Mail Merge Helper to the top of the submenu or moving all submenu items up to the main Tools menu
Remove—Letter Wizard (especially if your firm has similar custom templates)
Table menu:
(no suggestions)
Window menu:
(no suggestions)
Help menu:
Remove—Office on the Web
Remove—Activate Product
Remove—WordPerfect Help
Remove—Detect and Repair

DIALOG BOXES

Insert… AutoText…
Remove—some of the default text choices such as "Dear Mom and Dad"
Add—corporate name, address, etc.
Tools… AutoCorrect…
Change—(c) to (c and likewise (r) to (r
Tools… AutoCorrect… AutoFormat…
Uncheck—nearly all these features
Tools… AutoCorrect… Smart Tags…
Uncheck—Label Text with Smart Tags
Tools… Customize… Options…
Uncheck—Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows
Check—Always show full menus
Tools… Options… View…
Uncheck—Smart Tags (until you have time to train your users about them)
Tools… Options… General…
Uncheck—Recently used file list (especially if you have a document management program)
Uncheck—Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting AutoShapes
Tools… Options… Edit…
Uncheck—Keep track of formatting (warning: this feature is needed to make the Reveal Formatting feature work)
Uncheck—Enable click and type
Tools… Options… Print…
Background printing (debatable)
Tools… Options… Save…
Uncheck—Fast saves
Uncheck—Ebbed linguistic data
Uncheck—Embed smart tags
Tools… Options… Security…
Check—Warn before printing, saving or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments (suggestion: make this a policy change via the Office Resource Kit so users can’t turn this back off)
Set—Macro Security at high (unless you have SoftWise which will trip false positives)
Tools… Options… File Locations…
You may consider a central server location for clipart and workgroup templates
Tools… Options… Complex Scripts
This tab is only available if the feature is installed
Tools… Options… Spelling & Grammar
Uncheck—Ignore words in uppercase
Tools… Options… Track Changes
Uncheck—Use balloons in print and web layout (or at least change the Preferred width to 1 or 1.5". Note: if you use Comments this feature must be turned on.)
Tools… Options… User Information
Add corporate mailing address
Tools… Options… Compatibility
(no suggestions)

Side notes of interest:

Delta View versions 2.8 or less will crash when comparing documents with Tracked Changes. This is supposedly resolved in version 2.9.
WordPerfect XP will frequently freeze when you try to print unless you install the latest WP service packs. This is due to a conflict with XP’s speech recognition features.

Top XP Upgrade Problems (a part of 2003.zip)