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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Why is “Blank Word Document” not blank?

bstraughan - Jul 28, 2008 - 11:20 pm

I have Office 2004 and when I try to open a new Word document it always
opens with my father's obituary. As you can probably understand I would
really like to have it open with an empty NEW document.
I run it on a Intel Core Duo Processor Mac, Leopard OS, 2 Gigs of RAM

I have deleted the actual file (after saving the original to AppleWorks) but it still pops up in Word when I open a new document.

There is a web page support for this questions for PCs but it doens't really apply to Macs (even though it says it does). http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/...ocNotBlank.htm

Thank you very much for your time.

macbri - Jul 29, 2008 - 12:02 am

Hi Barry -

The website you provided does indeed address the issue for Windows users. For the Mac, the template filename is a little different (Normal instead of Normal.dot) and the location is different too. So, al
l you should have to do is:

(1) Make sure you quit Word if it's running

(2) In the Finder, open your Documents Folder. Inside this look for "Microsoft User Data" and inside here you should find a file called simply "Normal". Move this to the Trash, but don't empty the Trash just yet.

(3) Launch Microsoft Word again. A new "Normal" template should be created which is blank.

If everything worked and new documents are blank, you can empty the trash and you're done.

- Brian

bstraughan - Jul 29, 2008 - 12:08 am

Hi Brian,
Thank you very much for your time. I found the answer and corrected the problem about 15 minutes before your response. But it is so encouraging to know you and other like you are out there willing to help the rest of us. I found the information on http://word.mvps.org/Mac/MacWordNormal.html