RE: Comparing the MS Word normal style on two computers?

["Goldstein, Dan" <DGoldstein -at- DeusTech -dot- com>]

Forgetting the OS for now, are you both using the same version of Word?

When you select Tools|Templates and Add-Ins, is the "Automatically Update
Document Styles" check box selected? It should *never* be.

Are you both viewing in Print Layout?

And leaving all that aside... Since she does everything in Normal style and
uses manual formatting, it's likely that no one will see the document
exactly as she sees it.

Keep in mind that the Normal style is only a small subset of the Normal.dot
template, which is itself a collection of many styles, not to mention
toolbars, menus, Autotext, etc. All of your customization is stored in
Normal.dot by default.

Perhaps WordPad would be a better solution than Word.

-- Dan Goldstein

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Guy K. Haas 
> Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 5:05 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Comparing the MS Word normal style on two computers?
> 
> When my wife composes a Word document on her (Win2K) laptop 
> and sends it 
> to me, and I open it on my (Win 98) desktop system, there are 
> significant layout differences. It could be margins, leading, 
> kerning, 
> whatever, but pages she has carefully laid out are all wonky on my 
> system.  Pages break where they should not.  Flows between 
> columns break at different points, etc.
> 
> Even though she uses only fonts we both have, it is wonky.
> I copied all her fonts to my system and that made no change to the 
> wonkiness.
> 
> It has been suggested that a prime suspect would be that her Normal 
> style (yes, that's about all she uses, plus tweaks) is different from 
> mine.  (I hardly use MS Word at all -- sticking with 
> FrameMaker for any real documentation jobs.)
> 
> Is there a simple way to compare two normal.dot files?  
> Sure, one could 
> open each one on its own system and pane by pane compare the 
> settings, but is there a simpler way?

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