Permanently Change the Default Styles for New Word Documents
Written by
Gregory Scot Collins
Wednesday, 18 February 2009, 4:43 PM
This article has been tested to work with the following products and versions. No guarantee of compatibility, with or without modification, is offered for products or versions other than those listed.
IN THIS ARTICLE:
If you have a specific style guide that you always use when creating documents in Microsoft Word, it can become quite a nuisance to have to update your styles for each new document. You could start from an existing document, deleting all the contents, but there’s a much more simple and effective way.
Change the Normal template
Word uses a template to create new documents, specifically the Normal template. Changing the Normal template will affect every new document created in Word. Because of this, before you make any changes to the Normal template, you might want to make a backup copy of it that you can revert to.
The following steps will allow you to update the template that specifies the styles used in each new document you create:
- Launch Microsoft Word.
- Press CTRL+O.
- In the Open dialog box, click Templates under Favorite Links, as shown in Screenshot 1.
- Double-click the template named Normal.
- Make the desired style changes.
- Save and close the template.
Now when you create a new Word document, the updated template will be used.
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Braintrove. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied, published, broadcast, rewritten
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