Where are the settings located?

[cbs604]

I teach MS Word, Excel and Access to newbies, intermediate and advanced students. One of the most frustrating things I come across is when previous students (not mine) have fiddled with the default settings. For example, I was showing how to do bullets the other day, and instead of the solid black dot, there were butterflies, propellers, and all sorts of graphics - anything but a black dot! This is not only annoying, but disruptive to the class.

I am about to start a routine where I push out my own copy of normal.dot from my server to the workstations prior to class, but I have noted that it does not include all the default settings, such as bullets.

Does anyone know where these settings are stored? Are they in a file somewhere? or the registry?

Any tutors out there who have similar frustrations and what techniques have you found that work? (Apart from breaking their fingers)


Cheers,
Brodie

 

[straybullet]

Between batches of Apps students - we always arranged for the IT students to have some "hands-on" time. They would format and completely reinstall the Apps machines. Worked out well for everyone. The IT students got some practice and the Apps students all had the same setup - making the exercises go smoothly.

Let them hate - so long as they fear... Lucius Accius

 

[TonyJollans]

Hi Brodie,

Word stores settings in three places altogether:
[ul][li]Templates[/li]
[li]The Registry[/li]
[li]PIP Files (2K and later)[/li][/ul]
For training environments you really should reset them all, but exactly what needs setting will depend a little on your setup as regards multiple userids.

Settings in the registry (for the current user) are at:

[blue]HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\v.0\Word[/blue]

(where v.0 is the version - 9.0 for 2K, 10.0 for XP, 11.0 for 2K3).

Settings for bullets, etc. are in [blue]\Data\List Gallery Presets[/blue] within the above key. You can delete that key or, better, if you delete the whole [blue]\Data[/blue] key you will sort out most of your problems and Word will reinstall a bit of itself on next use.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[cbs604]

Thanks, Tony.

Why MS chose to deeply hide these settings I will never understand. Bring back .ini files, or something like normal.dot which could be stored in the users area.

In the meantime we are looking at some software that resets the entire pc to a standard configuration on each re-boot.

Any experience in this area?


Cheers,
Brodie

 

[TonyJollans]

Sorry, Brodie, I have no experience of any software of that sort. I would want to be a bit careful about doing it at every reboot, though, without an option to override.

I am not a sysadmin and don't really know enough about roaming profiles but you ought to be able to do what you want at a userid level - deleting and recreating training userids for example.

Maybe someone else here knows better or it may be worth asking in the OS forums such as Windows XP Pro (forum779).

Enjoy,
Tony

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We want to help you; help us to do it by reading this: Before you ask a question.
Excel VBA Training and more Help at [url=http://www.vbaexpress.

 

[cbs604]

Profiles would do the trick, but with the number of students using the lab, I don't think we could handle the administrative overhead. All students log on as "student" (no pw) at the moment, and that is the problem - students have to suffer the mess previous "fiddlers" have left behind.

Cheers,
Brodie