Auto-Text disappears

Question

I use auto-text a lot and for the past 3 years my auto-text crashes and I have to re-create all of them. Today, I had a document open and then it becomes unresponsive. I then get a message that "word cannot open the document (built-in building blocks)" I also get "word couldn't recover an automatically saved documents from the last session c:...Built-in Building blocks.dotx). I have researched so many times and it keeps crashing.

Answer 1

Like John, I see no way that renaming your normal template will help with this. Instead, you want to be looking for older copies of that template or backup copies. The Normal template is the default repository for AutoText.

You can store your AutoText and Building Blocks elsewhere.

AutoText is stored in your normal template by default. Other building blocks are stored in your Building Blocks.dotx file by default. I try to avoid using either and store in other templates.
See my writing on the topic: Where Can Building Blocks Be Stored?

Answer 2

Hi @ILG2020-BM ,
I suggest you go to this location:

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates

Try to rename Normal.dotm to Normal.dotm.old, this will help you reset Word custom settings. Restart Word and check the result.

Any updates please let me know and I'm glad to help you.

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Answer 3

I'm not sure what happened but today all of my auto-text are gone! There's some problem with this feature that I depend on very much and MicroSoft refuses to fix it; and I have 365, by the way.

Answer 4

Unfortunately this happed again...4 times in the last week. I read this article: https://gregmaxey.com/word_tip_pages/building_blocks_autotext.html

Looks like the auto-text are saved under user/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Office/recent

When I open a document at this location, it has the auto-text. When I redefine the building block, they all say back-up, etc.

1. The predefined built-in building blocks entries that ship with Word are stored in a template named Building Blocks.dotx (Word 2007) or Built-in Building Blocks.dotx (Word 2010-2013). The template is located in an application installation folder created when you install Word. For example, my Word 2007 template is located at C:\Program Files (x86) \Microsoft Office\Office12\Document Parts\1033 (where 1033 is a localID number representing the local language {1003 representing U.S. English}). This is the original distribution template and should not be modified.
   2. During installation of the application, a parallel folder containing the working Building Blocks templates is created in the user application folder ending with: ...\Microsoft Office\Document Building Blocks. For example, my Word 2007 working Building Blocks templates are located at C:\User\Maxey\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Office\Document Building Blocks\1033. My Word 2010 working Building Block Templates are located at: C:\User\Maxey\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Office\Document Building Blocks\1033\14. The exact location of your working Building Blocks templates will be determined by your operating system, user name, and installation path