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Trying to move the file of Autotext entries between a Win7, Office 07 client and a Win10, Office 16 client. Conventional wisdom is to move the Normal.dotm file to the appropriate folder -

users/(username)/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Templates

Did that. No joy.

Conventional wisdom is that the Normal.dotm can be opened in Word. Doing so brings up an empty document - even on the old machine.

On the old machine I renamed normal.dotm as normal.old so Word could create a new, empty, normal.dotm. It does, but the original autotext entries are still available.

This should be an easy move. Is it me? Is it Microsoft? What is happening (or not, as the case may be?

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  • AutoText is saved to a template; Normal, Building Blocks, or some other custom template. Do you remember actually saving it to the Normal template? And just to be sure, do you actually mean AutoCorrect entries? Plain text AutoCorrect entries are not stored in a template, but in another file labeled ACL. – Rich Michaels Jan 27 '19 at 11:53
  • Firstly, thank you: And yes, I did mean AutoText. All the searches I've done pointed me to Normal.dotm, as I said. I sought no option on where to send entries and so Normal.dotm sounded as if it was the default. It seems that's not the case, as in the answer below. – Richard Wright Jan 28 '19 at 12:37
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If you've moved Normal over and had no joy, then you need to move the "Building Blocks.dotx" file in your 2007 profile to the new machine.

This short (~6min) Jess Stratton (of lynda.com) video on youtube explains how to find the file and move it.

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  • Thank you for the pointer. See my comments on Rich Michaels' response yesterday. Although the clip is really intended for the mainly inexperienced it at least pointed me to the correct file. Is there a way of opening the dotx file to examine its contents? Every time I try to open one it comes up with a blank document - I suppose because it's a template (duh!) – Richard Wright Jan 28 '19 at 12:42
  • Sure. Make a copy of the file and rename it with the .zip extension. From there you can navigate through the file using Window's native functionality. When you have the .dotx open as a zip file, navigate to "YourFile.Zip"\word\glossary\document.xml. All of the quickparts within the building blocks file are there. You can open any Word.dotx file as a zip and see what's inside it. My usual spot to poke in is the word\media\ directory where all of the images within the doc are located. Much better than messing with the save as picture function. – NothingToSeeHere Jan 28 '19 at 19:57

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