Having trouble changing Microsoft Word defaults? The ultimate way to change defaults is sure to work. It’s has been around since the very early days of Word and works for Outlook too!
We often hear from people having trouble changing Word’s opening (default) settings for a new document. Various places in Word have ‘Set as Default’ buttons available, for example changing the default font (left) or the default language (right) for a new document.
It’s a great idea on paper (no pun intended) but in practice Word can be frustratingly stubborn about changing the setup for a new document. ‘Set as Default’ buttons might work but sometimes does not.
There’s a lot of advice online with complex ways to fix this. Using alternative places to change settings, changing styles, reinstalling Office, sacrificing to the pagan god of your choice, whatever.
You can go through all those suggested workarounds, trying different online tips and generally waste a lot of your valuable time …. OR
Go to the base of the problem and fix Word directly.
Edit the template
Edit the base template normal.dotm or normalemail.dotm for Outlook classic emails. Those two files have all the default settings for Word and Outlook (classic) for Windows.
In early versions of Word, changing the Normal template was the only way to change default settings. That was before before Microsoft added the ‘Set as Default’ options that don’t always work.
Find Word template normal.dotm
Find normal.dotm which is the ‘Blank Document’ Word template.
It’s normally at:
C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\TemplatesCheck the template location at Options | Advanced| General | File Locations | User Templates has the location of your main templates.
We strongly suggest you make a backup copy of normal.dotm, just in case your changes have unintended effects.
Open normal.dotm from File | Open.
Change the file type to Word Macro-Enabled Templates.
Choose Normal.dotm then Open.
Check the file name on the title bar to make sure you have opened the template for editing and not created a new document.
Important – make sure it’s the Template
Make sure you’ve opened the normal.dotm template directly. Word’s default is to make a new document from a selected template. The top line of the opened Word template should show the file name of the template.
If you see something like Document1 , Document2 etc, then you’ve made a new document. Close it and try again.
Edit normal.dotm
Now you can edit the template directly.
Change the styles, page size or orientation, default font, language and many other things..
Save the template then open a new document to check the results. Repeat until you have a new blank document the way you want.
NormalEmail.dotm for Outlook emails
As you can see in the above picture, there’s also a NormalEmail.dotm template in the same folder as Normal.dotm. That’s the basis for Outlook (classic) emails because the Outlook email editor is really Microsoft Word in disguise.
Changing NormalEmail.dotm will change the defaults for new emails in Outlook.
Still doesn’t work?
If your preferred defaults still don’t work there’s a few possibilities.
- Open the template again to see if your changes are showing.
- If not, there’s a problem with saving the template.
- If your changes are there, Word will be using another template file.
- Make sure you’ve edited the template not a new document … see above.
- Are you editing the correct template? We’ve seen many cases of people editing the wrong template.
- In an organisation, the IT department might have a shared template that overrides any changes made by an individual.
- Ask for help … with details. Simply complaining that ” It doesn’t work ” won’t help.
Set the default translation language in Word
Two ways to change document defaults in Microsoft Word
New default font, Aptos, in Microsoft 365 and Word
