Paul Begley Blog

How to open the Normal template in any version of Word

1. To edit the normal template in any version of Word on any Windows operating system do the following:
2. Open Word.
3. Open the vba Editor by Pressing Alt+F11 together.
4. At the bottom of the vba Editor window is something called the Immediate window. (Press Ctrl+G to activate this window if you don’t see it.) Click in that Immediate window.
5. Type the following (or copy it from here and paste it):
6. application.NormalTemplate.OpenAsDocument
7. Press Enter
8. Close the vba editor
9. You are now editing the normal.dot or normal.dotm template.
10. Make the appropriate changes and save.

The next time you open a new document, it will have the defaults you saved in the template.