[dba-Tech] MS-Word template location missing

Dear All
I can't be the first to see this. What solutions are there ?

MS Word stores a reference to the attached template inside its documents.
Sounds like a good idea at first.

Our projects people have over a period of years kept that template path on a
server that has now closed down (a year ago maybe). There is a new one,
different server but actually a very similar path therein (but not in my
User or Workgroup template paths).

They've been using NT4 with Office 2000, loading up old documents just fine.
Now they're being given Windows XP with Office 2000, and their entire Word
document back catalog is a disaster. Each document they complain about (may
not be all in any given location) takes minutes (five or ten) to open on XP,
but NT4 machines still seem just fine.

Investigation so far shows that the local XP machine is tapping its heels,
processor idle, for the duration. So it looks like maybe a DNS query is
going out for the missing server and the response when it comes is negative
anyway. Whereas maybe NT4 didn't bother about doing all that and just used a
nearby normal.dot straightaway.

Interrogated from an Access mdb using a WdApp object, it still takes just
that long to open the document (with the switch/retry box up), but then
reports that it's attached to normal.dot. I can look in the live
Word/Tools/Templates&Addins, and the full URL of the missing template is
visible, but VBA doesn't see that at all. So I can't select a document for
editing based on having the wrong template attached.

I put a line in my pc's hosts file to give the new server an alias of the
old servername. This speeds things up tremendously, but VBA still sees
normal.dot as the attached template.

I'm still investigating; maybe I'll move my template location to where the
template is, or copy the template to my user or workgroup template location.
I presume the Projects people have suitable template locations entered
already, but I'll have to check.

I have entered searches in google but I haven't found anyone else reporting
this - perhaps the solution is obvious to everyone else ?

I'm afraid I'm a late night (UK) user only so I'll just have to collect your
ideas till tomorrow.

Regards
Mike Tope