Yes; as far as I understood it, it didn't deal with the situation when the building blocks organizer is completely empty. Yet if you open built-in building blocks.dotx directly, all the building blocks are displayable.

Which Built-In Building Blocks.dotx file are you opening directly? You may have more than one on your system.

Are you opening the one in a subfolder of your program files folder, or the one that is in a subfolder of your AppData folder?

On my computer I have one at
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\Document Parts\1033\14
That is not the one that Word uses. Leave it alone!

There is a separate one at:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks\1033\14
This is a hidden system folder and you have to override Windows defaults to see it.
That is the file that should be renamed.

The latter is the one I have been dealing with. I haven't touched the other.

As yet I've not seen any confirmation that the fix in the link I posted back in post #5 in this thread has been tried. Indeed, I can't see how simply opening Building Blocks.dotx is supposed to resolve/prove anything about the problem.

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

I am sorry but I didn't find anything that I thought related to my problem to be tried. Could you please be more explicit about what you thought was germane to the problem? Many thanks. I will then implement it.

In your very first post, you said:
The link I provided contains the 'usual' fix for a faulty Building Blocks.dotx file.

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

I have no problem opening either building blocks file. Both show that the galleries are there. But when a blank document is opened, the galleries are inaccessible. And the link you provided I did try and it told me that the fix did not apply to my situation, which I took to mean other programs than Word 2007 and Win 7 32 were inappropriate - it wasn't specific though. If there was something else in the link that I missed, I would be grateful having it pointed out.

Being able to open the Building Blocks.dotx file is not the issue. Repeatedly telling us you can do so contributes nothing to the solution, which is likely to require you to:
• move, delete or rename the Building Blocks.dotx file; and/or
• repair your Office installation.
Both approaches are mentioned in the link I provided. Granted, the FixIt is for Office 2007, but the other approaches apply equally to Office 2010.

Other possible location for the Building Blocks.dotx file are:
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks\1033\Building Blocks.dotx
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\LiveContent\User\Word Document Building Blocks\1033\Building Blocks.dotx

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

Have you tried renaming this file?

Yes, I have renamed the file, which had no effect.

And I have looked at live content\...\1033. I found the folder empty. The building blocks.dotx file that you indicate should be there isn't. I was surprised but did not know where to go from there and, to be truthful, did not know what to make of this.

I can't think of anything else but would try the following:

1. Make sure you have your installation disk for Office.
2. Uninstall Word. If you haven't tried a Repair, try that first.
3. With Word uninstalled search your hard drive for the built-in building blocks.dotx file. Search in hidden and system files as well.
4. Rename any file you find if you have any custom building blocks. If you have no building blocks that you created, delete the files.
5. Reinstall Word.

It should not take that and uninstalling/reinstalling Word has no effect on this problem if the faulty building blocks file is not dealt with.

I'm starting to wonder if the 'problem' is nothing more than a misunderstanding of how Word works. The OP says:
This is normal behaviour unless the:
• template the document is based on (which won't be Building Blocks.dotx) has them; and
• document is being viewed in Print Layout view; and
• Word is configured to 'show whitespace between pages in Print Layout view'.

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

I was assuming he meant that these don't show up under the Insert tab. Built-In Building Blocks.dotx does not have any headers, footers, or page numbers in the document itself, only in the building blocks stored in the template.