Cannot view contents or change Word 2003 normal.dot file

[Jim8080]

I'm running win10 Pro on two Dell T3500's

I use Word 2003 and have some minor problems which I hope will be fixed by renaming my normal.doc and restarting Word so I have the default setup. Word 2003 uses normal.dot; dotm was introduced on later versions.



I used %appdata%/Microsoft/templates to reach normal.dot

I have two problems:
Normal.dot is empty, even though I right-click on the file to open it.

I cannot rename normal.dot, because I'm told the file is open. The ~162 byte $normal.dot file is there. I can delete it and rename, but still have an empty file after restarting.

Maybe my problems cannot be fixed with a restore; problems are:

Links are not in blue and underlined.

View>Header and Footer does not provide the header and footer window.

Jim8080

[Charles Kenyon]

1. Word must be closed to rename normal.dot. See How to Find the Normal Template.
2. You should not have any text in the normal template.
3. The view of hyperlinks is governed by the Hyperlink and Followed Hyperlink character styles.


Do you have the problem if you start Word in safe mode?