9

I want to reset the normal.dotm template on a Mac with the latest version of MS Word (15.x.x).

I found instructions on doing this on Windows here.

What's the equivalent for Mac Word?

Rationale for doing this is to try to avoid the problem addressed in this question.

Community
  • 1
Michael
  • 193
  • 1
  • 1
  • 7

2 Answers2

7

From this thread in Apple Exchange, the folder's location has changed for Office for Mac 2016. It's now located in

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates

For Office for Mac 2011 or if you upgraded from this edition to 2016, browse to this location

~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/My Templates

In Windows, I can delete the file normal.dotm to reset it. So you should try doing so in your Mac. You need first to close Word before deleting.

Sanny
  • 1,589
  • 1
  • 10
  • 15
  • Thanks for the quick reply - are you aware of any potential risk attached to deleting normal.dotm before I try that out? – Michael May 11 '16 at 13:00
  • `normal.dotm` is built into Word's code so if Word didn't find it, it'll recreate it from scratch with default settings. You don't need to delete it if you are not convinced; just move (not 'copy') the file to another safe folder if things have gone awry so you can restore it back. – Sanny May 11 '16 at 20:54
  • Any idea _how long_ Word takes to do this? I renamed the normal.dotm file and opened Word, tried creating a new doc and saving it, restarting the Mac etc. but so far... no new normal.dotm file! – Michael May 12 '16 at 12:47
  • If you managed to get a new document in Word then Word recreated `normal.dotm` successfully. The new template is probably hidden or in another directory. Try finding a folder called `Templates` (not `User Templates`, or `My Templates`) somewhere within `~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft`. – Sanny May 12 '16 at 16:38
3

For those who wind up here looking for how to find the Normal.dotm file on a Mac, (OSX 10.13.3 and Word v16.10, US English) I found it here:

cd ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User\ Content.localized/Templates.localized/
rm Normal.dotm
rm normal.dotm.bak

And as the instructions here say, deleting or moving the corrupted Normal.dotm fixes the problem, by auto-creating a new template when Word next runs.

unom
  • 602
  • 1
  • 6
  • 13
Dan Murphy
  • 31
  • 1