Keyboard customizations are not preserved when you reopen an RTF document in Word 2007 or in Word 2003

Consider the following scenario. You create a Microsoft Office Word 2007 document or a Microsoft Office Word 2003 document in .doc format. Then, you create a keyboard customization in this document. A customization may include any of the following:

• You change the font type.
• You assign a macro to a keyboard shortcut.
• You add custom menus.
• You add symbols.
• You add auto text.

You save this document in Rich Text Format (RTF). Then, you close and reopen the RTF document in Word 2007 or in Word 2003. In this scenario, the keyboard customizations that you created are not preserved.

The bulk file converter that is available from the Office 2007 Resource Kit and the bulk file converter for Office 2003 use RTF format to perform bulk conversion of documents. Therefore, documents that contain keyboard customizations lose the customizations when the bulk file converters convert a document.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

To work around this problem in Word 2007, use .doc format or .docx format. To work around this problem in Word 2003, use .doc format.