Possible to share templates between multiple users?

Question

Microsoft's knowledgebase stinks so I'm coming here in the hopes of finding some answers... Basically, I've got a slew of client machines all sharing a Dell PV file server. I've stored a collection of MS Office templates in a directory on this server and would like all of my users to access this directory - I've done this by adding shortcuts to this network-based directory to each person's /Documents & Settings//Application Data/Microsoft/Templates directory. On the surface, this works fine - going to File-New... results in a nice tab w/ that shortcut's name and all of the templates listed in that tab. However, when people outside the office receive a document created using one of these templates then there's either a prolonged delay before the doc opens or their Office app crashes. I can't for the life of me figure out what I can be doing wrong!

abach · Answer

Set the path in Tools, Options, File Locations in Word, using Workgroup Templates to point to the folder on the server.   Are you also using Excel and PowerPoint templates?

ChrisJScott · Answer

Unfortunately, that doesn't work properly. I had started by configuring everybody w/ workgroup templates, only to find that whenever a user created a document using a template and then send that document outside the agency, it would either take a very long time to open or crash the user's program altogether.

Office, apparently, expects to be able to contac the original location of the template. Of course, an external user doesn't have access to our file server, so their program gets stuck.

This is completely idiotic but it's apparently trhe way the stupid program works. See here:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.office.misc/browse_thread/thread/fade002d9795c989/ec6a83ff4efcf84a?q=chrisjscott&rnum=1#ec6a83ff4efcf84a

for a discussion of this issue.

So I'm left to figure out how to share templates in a way that they will work (call me crazy) and I'd love to be able to keep them in one place so changes are automatically availbe to all users!

abach · Answer

You are correct in that Word will look for the original template. It needs this for any styles, margins settings, etc. that the template contains.

I've never experienced the problem of emailing an attachment of a Word document based on a custom template and not being able to open it, or having a slow opening.

Could you send me a Word file, created from one of your templates, as an attachment? I'd like to look at one.

Productivity Software

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