I developed a document in MS Word 2007 that people use as a template (although it is not a dotm or dotx file). Because certain macros in a toolbar (as an add-in) were required, I made the file a docm file since as a docx file, the toolbar and macro disappeared. Now to my surprise, they seem to be staying when the docm file is saved as a docx, when we've been warning people to keep it as a docm file if they want the special toolbar. It would be great if we could keep the macros in the docx file since that is more familiar to the users...but why is it working? Is this something new? I just want to be sure that I don't start providing this as a docx and then all of a sudden, the macros are no longer there.

The essential difference between a docx file and a docm file is that a docx file cannot contain macros when saved. You can, however run macros against them; you can even add a macro to a docx file if you don't mind losing it upon closing the file.

Your addin should be saved as a dotm file (ie a word template), thereby making its macros available to all documents based on that template. Indeed, if the 'special toolbar' is appearing in the docx files, I suspect that's exactly what has happened.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

You're right...macros all disappeared after I closed the docx, rebooted, and opened again. Oh well.

As I said in my previous post, if you added the macros etc to the template upon which the documents are based, they'd still be available to the docx files upon re-opening.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

See Templates in Microsoft Word and What is the relationship between a Microsoft Word document and its template? for more on making and using templates.