Reference Point Templates

We support APA style & MLA Style

KB 20090614
6/14/2009, revised 7/3/2009

Status: resolved. Update your template with below instructions.

This info is absolutely critical! Please read.

Microsoft released an update on June 8th, 2009 that breaks some of Word 2007's features. If your computer is set to automatically update software you may be affected. These bugs can very adversely affect your APA or MLA paper when using Word 2007.

If you want to keep things simple just update our software:

• click Start, All Programs, APA Style, Online Updates

This will download a fix from us to prevent problems w/ new papers. If you have a problem w/ an existing paper you might want to contact us, but in general you need to:

• start a new paper w/ our template
• copy the text from the existing paper and paste into the new paper

If you want more detail or you want to get a cure directly from Microsoft please read on.

What are the symptoms of the Word 2007 Microsoft bugs:

• documents saved in Word 2007 .docx format will not save citations and will not sort references.
• documents saved in Word 2007 .docx format might insert reference list items into the wrong section of your paper and if you don't notice this right away this make a real mess of the paragraph where the reference ends up.

How can you fix this problem?

We've found three ways to fix this problem. For those of you in the health care fields our 2 fixes treat the symptoms and Microsoft's fix cures the illness but is a bit harder to implement (Ha, just like w/ patients).

Fix method #1: update our software by following the above update instructions. The side effects of this fix is that your documents will be saved in the standard Word .doc format rather than Word 2007's .dotx format. There are no other side effects and this should not cause any problems for you or other people who use your document.

Fix method #2: If you don't use fix #1 then remember to save your document in the standard Word format like this:

• Start your paper with our software as you normally would per our instructions
  Save your paper immediately but when you save click on "Files of type" at the bottom of the save screen.
• Change the type to Word 97-2003 document (*.doc)
• Name your paper and save it
• Follow the above instructions every time you start a new paper with our templates. You only have to do this once per paper.

Fix method #3, the cure. This is a bit harder but you can then save your documents in any format you want to:

• Visit this site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970942/
• Click "View and request hotfix downloads"
• Fill in Microsoft's information request form and wait to receive their email
• From your email click the link way down at the bottom of Microsoft's email that is preceeded by "Location:"
• Download or run the file (we had a bit of trouble downloading but after several tries it downloaded quickly)
• When running the download you will be prompted for a password which is in Microsoft's email
• Running this download will unzip a file, save that file to a place where you can find it, e.g. your desktop. To do this click the little box w/ the 3 dots and select Desktop.
• Find the unzipped file on your desktop and double click to install.

Thanks for your patience. We know this is a pain but we wanted to give you a heads up and we hope your documents are OK!