In previous columns I've discussed customizing your own Word interface to make it easier for you to get your work done. This can be done through macros, AutoText, keyboard shortcuts, and custom toolbars. Once you've gone to the work of creating these, it would be nice (and maybe worth a few brownie points) if you could share them with your co-workers and friends. These same procedures work to make a backup of your customizations and make it easier for you to transport them to a different machine.

Customizations in Word - Background

The customizations that you can make in Word include:

1. Macros - recorded or written using VBA - these are kept in templates (default Normal.dot) or documents. Unless you have a definite reason and know what you are doing, keep them in templates.

2. AutoText entries - also kept in templates (default Normal.dot). AutoText entries cannot be stored in documents. For more on AutoText, follow the links on my Web Resources page.

3. Custom toolbars - also kept in templates (default Normal.dot) or documents. As with macros, you will want to keep toolbars in templates with rare exceptions. You make these with Tools => Customize... or with VBA.

4. Custom toolbar buttons and menu commands - really a subset of custom toolbars except includes customizations to built-in toolbars and menus.

5. Styles - also kept in templates except that after creation documents have their own styles which are generally not updated by the styles in the document's underlying template. See Understanding Styles for more about styles.

6. UserForms - homemade dialog boxes and wizards

7. Keyboard shortcuts (also called keybindings) are stored in templates or documents.

8. AutoCorrect entries - for the most part stored in separate files and very different from AutoText in construction if not in use.

9. Your user preferences (Tools => Options) - stored in the registry's Word data key. We won't mess with the registry here. (Keeping with the metaphor of moving furniture, working with the registry is closer to rewiring your house, with all of the implications that go with that image.)

We will first look at the customizations that are stored in templates and copying/moving them to a different template. That is: Macros, AutoText, Custom Toolbars, Keybindings and Styles. We will then look at those stored elsewhere: AutoCorrect Entries and user preferences.

Open the target template or a document based on the target template. 

I would suggest that you move the items you want to share into a global template. The simplest way is to open the template or create a new document based on the template. You will want to use a document template instead if the customizations only are used in a specific kind of document that will have its own document template. 

Starting a new global template

If you don't already have a global template, go to File => New and click "New Template" in the bottom right corner of the dialog box. 

Select blank document. You can use this document to keep notes on what you have done if you want. Save it using a name like "MyGlobal.dot." Don't close it.

Copy your Styles

Use the Organizer:

(Tools => Templates and Add-Ins... => Organizer (button) => Styles (tab)) to copy your styles to a document or document template. I recommend making the copies three times. This is so any styles based on other styles will "take." Specifically, copy all of the styles you need to copy once. Then copy the same styles again, and again a third time. The second and third times you will be asked if you want to overwrite the existing style(s). The answer to this should be "yes."  Failure to make the multiple copies may mean that your styles won't transfer properly. If any of your macros apply your styles, you should copy the styles before the macros.

Copy your macros

(Tools => Templates and Add-Ins... => Organizer (button) => Macro Project Items (tab)) to copy a macro module.

Probably, the macros will be in the Macro Module "New Macros." in Normal.dot. If you already have a Module named "New Macros" in your template, rename it "OldMacros" for now so you can copy the Module from Normal.dot to your template. If there are other modules in Normal.dot you want to copy those as well.

Then close the Organizer and save your template. Don't close the template, yet.

Use the VBA Editor (Alt-F11) to look at the New Macros module in your template (not the one in Normal.dot). You should be able to spot the macros that you use. Delete any other macros and Ctrl-S to save your changes to the Template. If you already had macros in your template and had to rename "New Macros," double-click on that "OldMacros" module. For now, you will want to move all the macros to your new "New Macros" module. Then right-click on the "OldMacros" Module and remove it. Word will ask you if you want to export first; answer: No. With your insertion point back in the New Macros module of your template, press Ctrl-S to again save your template.

Then double click on the Module "New Macros" in Normal.dot and delete the macros that you transferred to your template. (Don't delete the ones that you decided you don't use, just yet, in case you were wrong about them.) Ctrl-S to save your changes to Normal.dot.

If you have macros that are called by toolbar buttons or keybindings, the macros must be in place before you move these customizations. They must have the same name and be in a module with the same name in a project with the same name that  they were in before. i.e., the macro named MyMacro that is in a module named TrustedMacros in project named TemplateProject, will not work with a moved toolbar or keybinding unless it, and the project and module keep the same names they had when the toolbar/keybinding was created. They will run just fine if you give them new names, but your toolbars and keybindings won't be able to find them.

Save your global template. 

Copy your toolbars

If you have toolbars that you want to move, copy those as well, after you have copied any macros, styles, or AutoText that the toolbars call. Again, Styles won't do you much good in a global template. 

Save and close your global template. If this is a new template, close Word and move the global template to your Word Startup folder.

Open a new blank document. Tools => Customize => Toolbars (1st Tab) and check your custom toolbars. Right-click on the selection and rename it xxx Old Toolbar. (We are doing this before deleting it. Want to check if new toolbar works and can't really do that without changing the name.) Close the Customize dialog box.

Create a new document from your template. File => New... Check to see if your toolbars and macros function the way you want them to. Type something in the document and then close it without saving it. You should be prompted as to whether your want to save the changes made to MyGlobal.dot. Answer "Yes."

Assuming that your toolbars and macros function properly, you can now use Tools => Customize (this time customizing Normal.dot) to delete "Anne's Old Toolbar." Quit Word and save your changes to Normal.dot.

Next time, when you create a toolbar using the Customize command under the Tools menu, or Tools = Macros... to record a macro, check to make sure that it is being saved in the template that will be using it rather than in Normal.dot. Likewise, make sure that any changes you make to that toolbar or macro get saved in the template.

This way, if you pass your template on to someone else, they will have the benefit of your toolbar and macros. Also, Normal.dot corrupts from time to time (even without the assistance of a virus). Rebuilding your customizations can be a real pain.

How to create copy-able customizations to the built-in toolbars and menus:

Organizer will not copy customizations to built-in toolbars and menus, so you have to work around this limitation. You cannot copy customizations made directly to these toolbars or menus. The way I have used is:

I create a shadow toolbar in my global template to hold my customizations. It has a custom menu for each built-in menu or toolbar that I customize.

MyFile MyEdit MyView MyFormat, etc.

I use a separate shadow toolbar for the shortcut menus but you could put them all on one if you wanted to, it depends on how many customizations you do. I include a custom menu named Chas that has some of my favorite templates and commands. That menu is one of the main customizations of my global template and I want to be able to back it up or move it. It was designed to go on the main menu bar, but if I created it there (as I did at first) I would not be able to copy it.

I put the customizations on those custom menus on this custom toolbar first. That means using Customize to add the commands. Then, once I've added a command to the custom toolbar, I Ctrl-drag it to the built-in.

You can use custom menus as a submenus to hold the deleted items, the simplest way to do this would be to move the items from the File menu to the MyFile => Deleted Items submenu and so forth.

This isn't perfect but it makes rebuilding the customizations to the built-ins a lot less painful because the custom toolbar can be copied to another template using the organizer.

How to copy/move Userforms:

If you don't know what a userform is, chances are real good that you don't have any that you have written. It is a VBA construct - a homemade dialog box or wizard, not a piece of paper that you fill out, or an online simulation of this. If you have created and are using userforms, you probably don't need this tutorial and certainly don't need explicit instructions, so: Within the Visual Basic Editor either drag the userforms from one project to another or export the form from one project and import it into another.

Userforms can be very simple or elegantly complex. If you are doing VBA programming and not using them because you don't know how, take a look into the tutorials on the MVP website.

How to copy/move Keybindings:

These are the custom key assignments made to macros and commands. I use Chris Woodman's Add-In ShortCut Organizer, which looks and works like the regular Organizer except that it deals with keyboard shortcuts. You can download this from ShortCut Organizer download page.

Copying Customizations not stored in templates

How to copy/move AutoCorrect entries

AutoCorrect entries are stored in *.acl files and in Normal.dot. The files are language-specific. The best way to do this is to use the macro you can find at How can I import and export all my AutoCorrect entries, so they can be transferred to another machine? There is a macro included with Word that is supposed to do this, but it has several bugs that are fixed in this one available on the MVP website.

How to copy/backup user preferences that are stored in the Registry's Data Key.

This requires a simple macro, which you can record! Start up Word for a fresh session and record a macro called "MyUserSettings." The action to record is opening the Tools => Options dialog box and clicking on the tab for every page on that box. Then close that dialog and open the Tools => AutoCorrect dialog and do the same thing - click on each tab and then close the dialog box. This is based on instructions by Beth Melton in the article What exactly does the Data Key in the Registry store. I also include the Customize dialog box and Keyboard button from that box in this but am unsure that it actually helps. Stop recording. You now have one method to return to these settings: Just run the macro. Unfortunately, this won't save all of your user preferences, just a lot of them!

To save all of them, you can use RegEdit (Start => Run => RegEdit). Do not change anything in the Registry without (1) making a backup, and (2) having a good idea what you are doing! That is not for the faint-at-heart! I am suggesting making a specific backup of the Data Key for Word. The article by Beth Melton explains how to find the Data Key. If you right-click on it you can export it (make a copy) of your Word settings. This is a good idea because the Data Key seems to be easily corrupted. Doing this will not make any changes to the registry itself.

See Template Basics for more on templates (user and workgroup), global templates and Normal.dot.

See also Assigning Custom Button Faces to Your Toolbar and Menu Buttons.

See Distributing Your Macros to Other Users by Jonathon West, MVP.

We've covered a lot in the last few articles. Next month we'll take a look at dates in Microsoft Word. If you have a topic you would like to see covered in one of my columns' please write me. 

Chas Kenyon is a trial lawyer concentrating in criminal defense with a long interest (obsession?) with making word processing work well in the law office.  Visit his home page