When Word 97 starts, the message appears that NORMAL.DOT is corrupt and the
user is then asked if she would like to attempt AutoRecovery or not.  If No
is selected and Word exited and then entered, the error does not appear.
The NORMAL.DOT has been deleted and a new one created by Word, but the error
message still recurs.

The user is using Windows NT Workstation 4 (Service Pack 4) and has Office
97 SR-2a installed as well.

TIA,
Greg Hughes
Computer Systems Support
Mackay City Council
Australia
ph +61 7 4968 4426
fax +61 7 4951 4489

I have never seen this exact scenario, however this is what I suggest:

1)  Exit Word

2)  Delete normal.dot and ALL Word temporary files (note: these may not be
in the same directory as normal.dot...)

3)  If you are using Word Mail, rename email.dot as well, and get rid of its
temporary files.

4)  Restart Word.

     Word should restart without any errors and re-create normal.dot.
Wordmail will be unavailable.

If all is well, exit Word and reinstate email.dot.

If not:  The error message means that normal.dot is not useable due to
corruption.  About the only way to corrupt it short of editing it directly
is via a Word macro virus.  The error may also mean that the registry entry
that points to normal.dot is pointing to the wrong copy.  It could be
possible that Word is reading the Admiistrator's copy and replacing the
user's copy (I can't see how, but ...).

You need to check that the user has read/write access to their copy of
normal.dot, and that no other user has!  All sorts of interesting things
happen if normal.dot is on the network, or is read-only to the user, or is
accessable by another user, or is replaced by the login script :-)

Now: for a long shot...  The "... may be corrupt..." messages seem to be
caused by modifying the bullets and numbering specifications (correctly, the
List Templates).  This can be because incompatible specifications are being
imported from documents that have been created in Word 95 or Word 6.  In
other words, Word may be creating a clean copy of normal.dot, which is then
promptly re-corrupted as soon as the user opens a legacy document.

If that is the case, see my articles earlier on tools for decorrupting
documents.

Hope this helps.

--

Consultant Technical Writer
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Sydney, Australia (GMT +10 hrs) +61 (02) 9626 1048

So I take it out of the directory, pull the network cable out of the wall,
reboot, and have a stable desktop system temporarily.

BUT when I forget to pull the network cable -- I get the same warning
that NORMAL.DOT is corrupt, offering to restore it (I declined since I
have de-selected NORMAL and OhNo.DOT entirely, for this big document).

And I found out that something in there IS restoring the OhNo.DOT
template to the Startup folder automagically.  For all I know, the
custom setup we have is confusing the two DOT files, or else taking
out OhNo.DOT makes Word somehow corrupt NORMAL.DOT during a work session.

I don't know anything about Windows or Word, and have to do other work, so
can't just dump all the company software, have to wiggle around it thus.

Anyhow, with de-selecting /Tools/Templates/ Normal.DOT and OhNo.DOT and
pulling the network, my doc's been stable, 1500+ pages using INCLUDE fields
(/Insert/ File/Link...) for each of my 52 chapters.  Finally been able to get
the page numbers right, spellcheck the thing into a custom dictionary to
review all the words in it, and begin musing on how to index it.

I've asked the Tech Support manager to lend me a plain vanilla PC with
nothing installed but Microsoft NT, Windows, and WinZip so I can work
without trying so hard to disconnect all his company-specific setup.
I'm expecting a visit of a group with pitchforks and torches tomorrow.

There's your error message, anyhow another way to elicit it.