Installing SILAS, more problems

[Heidi]

Hi,
I just ran another Paratext workshop with experienced users and had
similar difficulties installing the newer version of SILAS. Most
installations failed and I had to do it manually. The manual
installation did work, however, the majority of the time and after
that there were no problems. I really appreciated the instructions for
manual installation.

On a few newer machines, however, I really struggled with even
installing manually. Normal.dot behaved as though it was write-
protected. Even though it appeared as though everything worked fine,
when we closed Word and opened a new document, the macros were totally
missing. I could find no way to make it truly accept the macros.

Any suggestions? Sorry about a lack of operating system information.
We were suffering many technical difficulties.

Heidi

[JimH]

Sorry about the problems, Heidi. Responses below:

----- Original Message -----
From: Heidi Rosendall
To: "silas-talk" <silas...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 7:05 PM
Subject: [SILAS-talk] Installing SILAS, more problems


> I just ran another Paratext workshop with experienced users and had
> similar difficulties installing the newer version of SILAS. Most
> installations failed and I had to do it manually. The manual
> installation did work, however, the majority of the time and after
> that there were no problems. I really appreciated the instructions for
> manual installation.
>

What version of Silas?

What versions of Word?

> On a few newer machines, however, I really struggled with even
> installing manually. Normal.dot behaved as though it was write-
> protected. Even though it appeared as though everything worked fine,
> when we closed Word and opened a new document, the macros were totally
> missing. I could find no way to make it truly accept the macros.
>

Were you running as an Administrator? If not, maybe an administrator
had
saved Normal.dot, so the ordinary user wasn't able to change it. Close
ALL
Word windows, log in with an account that has Administrator privileges
and
try the Install Silas procedure again.

A good trick for defeating problems with a stubborn Normal.dot is to:
1. Become an administrator.
2. Run Word.
3. Do Tools->Templates and add-Ins and operate the Attach button (or
in
Word 2007, do Office-button->Word Options->Popular->Show Developer tab
in
the ribbon, then on the Developer tab, click Document Template, and
operate
the Attach button.)
4. Click on the drop-down list at the top of the dialog, which will
display
the path leading to the folder where the templates are. Write down
that
path.
5. Close that dialog, then close ALL Word windows.
6. Open Control Panel
7. Choose Folder Options and open it. On the View tab, remove any
check
mark from "Hide protected operating system files", so you can explore
to
where Word puts its templates.
8. Open My Computer, and explore along the path that you wrote down,
till
you find the file "Normal.dot" (or "Normal.dotm" in Word 2007).
9. Rename it, perhaps to Normal.stubborn.
10. Open the START menu and go to Program Files, then to the Silas
folder
and do Install Silas.
11. Word will start, look for Normal.dot (or Normal.dotm in Word 2007)
and
make a new empty one, and open Install Silas.doc.
12. Operate the Install button as usual, and follow the manual
procedure if
necessary.
13. If that doesn't work, I could email you a Normal.dot with the
right
macro in it :-)

I've just made this an Issue on the Silas web page, issue 17, and put
this response there.

Jim

[Kim Blewett (gm)]

Hi Heidi,
See below...

Heidi wrote:

Hi,
I just ran another Paratext workshop with experienced users and had
similar difficulties installing the newer version of SILAS. Most
installations failed and I had to do it manually. The manual
installation did work, however, the majority of the time and after
that there were no problems. I really appreciated the instructions for
manual installation.

On a few newer machines, however, I really struggled with even
installing manually. Normal.dot behaved as though it was write-
protected. Even though it appeared as though everything worked fine,
when we closed Word and opened a new document, the macros were totally
missing. I could find no way to make it truly accept the macros.
  

I also had trouble with the install for "the latest version of Silas (the current one on the website, I presume, Heidi?), with seven computers running WinXPpro. I did find that sometimes the macros were copied, even tho it said the install failed; but the manual install did work after I discovered the following:

You may need to temporarily change *your working account* to administrator to make changes to Normal.dot, including Silas installation.

The problem is that each user has a unique Normal.dot, stored in \Documents and Settings\[username]\... Microsoft\Templates (Vista's is \Users\[username]\AppData\ Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. So if two users want to use Silas they each need to install it. One administrator can not install Silas for another user, UNLESS you change Word's User Templates folder to something more accessible, and point Word to this folder for each user account.

Or, you could install Silas into an admin account and then copy Normal.dot from that user\roaming...\templates folder into the other account folders. This is good especially if the user has not made a lot of customizations to their Normal.dot; otherwise it's frustrating to have to re-change fonts, styles, macros, toolbars, etc.

I ended up, for our training centre in PNG, making a folder on c:, outside of \Docs & Settings, and sharing that folder for other users. Then I logged on as Admin and pointed Word to that folder for its User Templates (under Tools-File Locations). Then I installed Silas.

Then I logged onto each limited user account and pointed Word to that same folder for User Templates. After closing Word and reopening it, I had Silas.

This worked for our training computers because we have "limited user" accounts for several languages on each machine. If you only have one or maybe two users on a machine, it may be better to change an account temporarily to Administrator and then install Silas.

I'll do more experimenting with Vista and get back to you if it works differently there, but see if this helps.

Kim

[Heidi]

Silas 2.101, Word 2003 and 2007, I don't think Administrative Rights
was the issue, but you have given me some more things to try...