Restoring Customizations Saved in Normal
Customizations to your Normal Template – such as Styles, Macros and AutoText – can be copied from an old corrupt Normal to a newly created Normal by following the procedure below. For more on Word’s Normal Template, including how to test it for corruption, click here.
- Close all open documents.
- Use File>Open to navigate to your Templates Folder.
- Change the Show drop-down list to Word Templates or you will not be able to select the Normal Template.
- Choose Normal and click Open.
- Check in the Title Bar at the top of the Word window. If it is not showing the name “Normal” then you have copied the Normal template instead of opening it. This is what will happen if you try to open it by double-clicking from the Finder (sorry — you have to follow these instructions carefully...)
- From the Tools>Templates and Add-ins dialog, click the Organizer button.
- Just below the left window, Organizer should be showing “... available in: Normal (global template)If it isn’t, you’ve got the wrong one open. Start again.
- The right window of the Organizer should be blank. There is a Close File button below the left-hand window, and an Open File button below the right-hand window (the one on the right might be labeled “Close File”, it’s a bug in some versions of Word). Click the button on the right, regardless of its label.
- You should now be able to see your old Normal Template in the directory; if you cannot, search until you find it. Choose it, and Open it.
- At the top of the Organizer dialog, above both windows, there is a row of tabs, one for each kind of resource the Organizer can copy. Click the tab for the kind of item you want to bring back. Let’s assume you want to bring your styles back: Click the Styles tab.
- Organizer now shows you a list of the items available within each kind (if you clicked the Styles tab in the previous step, you see a list of the styles in each template). The left window lists the items in your new template, the right window lists the items in the old template. In the right-hand window, choose the item(s) you want to restore. You can select more than one.
- Click Copy.
- Repeat for each additional kind of resource you wish to copy.
- Click Close File under both windows.
- Hold down your Shift key and choose Save All from the File menu. Save All does not appear unless you hold down your shift key.
- Quit Word and restart it (to force it to update its preferences).
Notes
- You cannot copy toolbars that you did not create. Word will not allow you to copy the built-in toolbars, because to do so would corrupt the target template. If you customize toolbars, you should always begin by creating your own, which is easy. To learn how, look up “custom toolbars” in Word’s Help and/or see the topic “Buttons, transferring between toolbars” in Bend Word to your Will, downloadable free here.
- Also there is no way to recover any keyboard shortcuts from a corrupt Normal Template, and you will have to set them up again. See here for suggestions on preventing such losses in the future.
- You cannot delete some built-in styles because they are a required part of the Word file structure. You can overwrite them by copying over the top of them.
- Be careful copying macro project items: If you did not write a macro, and you do not recognize it, do not copy it. This is where some viruses store their malware.
Look here for more information about formatting.