It is a fact of life that some users find some settings of the Options
volatile, exacerbated by the addition of poorly written add-ins that write
to the registry. The only sure solution is to force the settings using auto
macros. You may need a combination of
autoopen
autonew
and
autoexec
macros to fix all the likely issues.

Start the macro recorder and set all the options you require. As you move to
each new tab from options, all the settings on that tab will be recorded.
Extract the entries you want and add them to the macros.

Word's vba help explains the use of the different types of auto macros
http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm also has some sample code.

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org


Andrea wrote:
A Google search indicated old posts in this newsgroup on permanently
disabling the Reading Layout option in Word 2003, but I'm unable to
bring them up through my newsreader, so I'm creating a different
thread. I've gone through the generally suggested solutions:
unchecking the Allow box in the General/Options tab, renaming
normal.dot and forcing a new one to be created, creating an AutoOpen
macro in Normal.dot (Options.AllowReadingMode = False). However, the
checkbox kept returning--and also some of the other Options settings
didn't stay saved (e.g., Automatically Create Drawing Canvas,
Recently Used File List) and Save options (number minutes, etc.). Finally,
I deleted the
Word Data Settings registry key, but nothing seems to keep my Options
settings stable. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm using Windows
XP Pro SP2. Windows and Office 2003 are completely updated.