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Originally Posted by Guessed
Whilst you can store copies of dotx and dotm templates in Sharepoint, I don't ever expect the template to work with documents while they are there. I always have the templates loaded into my User Templates folder (and have IT run scripts to deliver updates to people's machines). Then the users can open any document and the template gets found automatically.
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They actually work pretty well: my script to refresh styles has got fairly complex but if it can't resolve the correct template it pops up a list of templates that's stored in an Excel file which is... also on SharePoint! The macro can also resolve a OneDrive link to the proper SharePoint link which is handy. If someone manually updates it to their local synced SharePoint link, the next person to run the script will change it to the SharePoint location. This is good because I have a standard macro in the template itself that runs a very basic update styles which I have in the QAT so even people without the ribbon can refresh the styles. It's a Rube Goldberg machine of a thing but I feel it's appropriate given how I assume the modern co-authoring features have been built on top of the original 90s MS Word code.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guessed
I believe (without real proof) that documents get confused when people edit documents in Browser mode rather than opening the desktop app. Unfortunately, Sharepoint makes it way too easy for authors to make quick edits via the browser.
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I don't discount this as a thing... however I'll flip this around and posit that modern co-authoring features have been designed with the online version in mind and it's doing so within the app that causes all the trouble as it was never properly designed for it. Obviously Word online is terrible and can't actually be used except for the simplest of documents, given it can't show images or tables properly.
I say this because I've given people the tip that if they want to co-author in Excel they should do so in the online version as that seems to give far fewer problems. People working in shared workbooks in Excel often end up "disconnected" and having to manually reconcile changes because something has gone wrong during sync, which doesn't happen when working online. Again this isn't always feasible as the web version doesn't have the full feature set.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guessed
That said, I have not had problems with table styles changing randomly. I would firstly check that you don't have multiple copies of templates sitting in various locations. When Word opens a document, it reads the name of the attached template and then goes looking for a template with the same name in at least FOUR different locations. Also verify that the "Automatically update styles" setting is not turned on.
Another area to check is the color palette - if the table styles were coloured using design palette colours then if those colours change the table will display that change.
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Stefan has very kindly found a tech note that has acknowledged this as a problem so hopefully this problem has been fixed now: as I said in another post I'm not sure how quickly this will help me as it seemed the problem started with a major company-wide update and I'm not sure how often these updates get pushed to our machines.
In any case the past week has been difficult as multiple reports of this trickled through to me from all parts of the country and I had no easy fix for anyone apart from "Uhhh you can do a refresh/try bringing styles in via the organiser or failing that reapply the table style and manually add back any formatting you had...?" while also wondering if all my macro shenanigans might be causing it in the first place!
In the back of my mind I do wonder, as the frequency of styles going haywire increases the closer we get to deadline, which coincides with people having to refresh the styles more often. It's almost like refreshing the styles wears the document out!