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Word's 'New from Existing ...' feature

A useful Word 2007 and Word 2010 feature – but not Word 2013?

A common way to make a new Word document is to use an old document at the starting point. Word has a few ways to do that quickly.

Why do it? Often you want to make a letter, proposal or other document that’s similar to one you’ve made before. Or perhaps the document has formatting that you want to use again. Whatever the reason, making a new document from an existing document happens all the time.

Sadly Microsoft has never really considered this a ‘good’ way to make a new document so the options to do it are hidden. Microsoft thinks that all new documents should be made from templates but in the real world we need other methods.


New from Existing …

This handy feature was in Word 2007 and Word 2010 only.


Word 2010

On the Word 2010 New menu at the end of the template list is ‘New from existing ….’

Word 2010 - new from existing image from Word


Word 2007

Word 2007 has it in a more prominent location on the left hand list of File | New

Word 2007 - new from existing image from Word

 

Despite appearances, this isn’t a template. Clicking ‘New from existing …’ opens the File Open dialog to choose a Word document. The difference is the default action ‘Create New’ instead of an Open or New button on bottom right.

Word - Create New button image from Word

Select the source document and click ‘Create New’ a new document is created with the content and formatting of the original.

The nice thing about ‘New from existing …’ is that you choose the file name of your choice when saving the newly created document. A truly useful ‘New from Existing …’ feature in Office makes it easy to name the new document as you wish – not some default ‘copy’ file name forced on you.


Word 2013

Alas, ‘New from Existing’ was removed from Word 2013 for yet unexplained reasons.

We look at New from Existing alternatives for Word 2013 users.

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