How to change the default settings for Word documents

Article contributed by Suzanne S. Barnhill

This article applies only to Word 2004 and earlier. Word 2007 has a different mechanism for document defaults.  See "How to Make the Formatting in Your Document Consistent"

When you start Word or press the New button on the Standard toolbar, you are presented with a Blank Document based on the built-in template called Normal.dot. Unless you choose a different template in Word’s File New dialog (whether one of the templates that come with Word or one you have created yourself), Word will always use the Normal.dot template.

Normal.dot serves as more than a document template: it is also a “global” template, which means that it stores many settings for how Word displays your documents (such as the View and Zoom ratio, toolbar customizations, and so on), as well as AutoText entries and macros that are available in every document you create (that’s why it’s called “global”).

You can read more about these subjects in “How can I make Word open new documents in a certain view (Normal or Page Layout) or at a specified zoom ratio?” and “What do Templates and Add-ins store?” The subject of this article is how to change the settings that apply specifically to new Blank Documents (i.e., ones based on Normal.dot).

Word’s default settings for Blank Documents seem to have been intended primarily for letters, hence the rather wide (1.25″) left and right margins. The default font was changed from 10-point Times New Roman in Word 97 and earlier to 12-point Times New Roman in Word 2000 and later. According to Microsoft, “This change was implemented because many Web browsers use 12pt as their default font size.” This decision therefore obviously had nothing to do with what may be most appropriate for printed documents. So it is not unreasonable to want narrower margins or a different font or font size. Luckily these are easy to change.

To change the default margins

1. Open a new Word document and go to File | Page Setup.
2. Set the margins the way you want them in your default document. Do not make any other changes in this dialog unless you want them to apply to all new documents.
3. Press the Default… button at the bottom of the dialog.

   

4. Word will ask if you want the new settings to apply to all new documents based on Normal.dot. Answer Yes.

To change the default font

1. Open a new Word document and go to Format | Font.

2. Change the font and/or font size to your preference.

3. Press the Default… button at the bottom of the dialog.

   

4. Word will ask if you want the new settings to apply to all new documents based on Normal.dot. Answer Yes.

To change a style

When you change the default font, you change the font for the Normal style. It is not advisable to make any other changes in the Normal style because so many other styles are based on it. If you make Normal justified, for example, or give it some Spacing Before or After, this change may ripple down to other styles (see “How styles in Word cascade”).

You may, however, want to change the formatting of other styles in Word. For example, there are many good reasons for using Word’s built-in Heading styles (see “Why use Word's built-in Heading styles”), but many users avoid them because they don’t like the formatting. Luckily, this is easy to change! Word MVP Shauna Kelly gives step-by-step instructions for doing this in her article “How to modify a style in Word.” As she explains, if you want your modified style to be the default for all new documents, you should check the “Add to template” box in the Modify Style dialog, and the change will be saved to Normal.dot.

To add a header, footer, or other static text

Users often want to automatically put the page number or filename in the document footer. This is easy to do, but you don’t want to do it in Normal.dot. Because Normal.dot is used as the basis not only for ordinary documents but also for labels and envelopes, headers and footers can cause formatting problems in these other types of documents. This is especially true in Word 2002, where a header/footer paragraph, once inserted, can never be entirely removed.

If you frequently create documents that require a specific header or footer, the best approach is to create a custom template for those documents. For the basics of creating a template, see “Creating a Template - The Basics (Part I).” If you are creating a template for letterhead, see “How to set up a letter template.”

When you press the default New button on the Standard toolbar, you always get a Blank Document based on Normal.dot (the button represents the FileNewDefault command). To use your custom template, you must select it from the File New dialog. In Word 2000 and earlier, you can access this dialog from the File menu (New… command), or you can add a toolbar button for the FileNew command. In Word 2002, the New… command on the File menu brings up the New Document task pane. You can access the File New dialog from the task pane by clicking on General Templates under “New from template,” but in order to access the File New dialog directly (without opening the task pane), you must add a toolbar button or menu item for the FileNewDialog (not FileNew) command.

To make other changes

Besides the font, margins, and styles, it’s hard to think of any changes you might want to make in Normal.dot that would not be a bad idea, but there may be times when you will want to open Normal.dot and make changes directly in the file. In order to do this, you will first need to find it, and then you will need to open it properly.

To find Normal.dot

The location of Normal.dot varies considerably from system to system. The only way to be sure where it is on your system is to look at the File Locations tab of Tools | Options. The path given for “User templates” is where you need to look. If you can’t see the entire path on the File Locations tab, select “User templates” and press Modify… In all versions before Word 2002, the full path should be given in the “Folder name” box, and you can copy and paste it elsewhere. In Word 2002, unfortunately, the path is not displayed in the “Folder name” box (yes, this is a bug). To see the full path, you have to click the down arrow beside the “Look in” box to display the folder tree. You can laboriously copy this down, but here’s a trick for forcing it to appear in a form that you can copy:

1. Make a note of the name of the folder shown in the “Look in” box.
2. Click the Up One Level button to get to the parent folder.
3. Right-click on the folder that was originally displayed in the “Look in” box (it will probably be named “Templates”).
4. Select Explore.
5. The Explorer window that opens will display the contents of the Templates folder.
6. If the Address Bar is not displayed, go to View | Toolbars and click on Address Bar. The full path to the Templates folder will be displayed in the Address Bar.
7. Select the path and use Ctrl + C to copy the it (for use with method (1) below).
8. If you want to open Normal.dot directly (method (2) below), it should be visible in the file list. If you don’t see it, choose View | Options or Tools | Folder Options | View and check the box or radio button for “Show hidden files and folders.”

To open it properly

There are two ways to open Normal.dot for editing and several ways not to. Here’s the rundown on how to do it:

1. In Word’s File Open dialog, browse to the folder whose path you copied from the Options dialog. If you have copied the path, you can paste it (using Ctrl + V) into the “File name” box and press Open, which will open the Templates folder. Select Normal.dot and press Open (or double-click on the filename).
2. If you prefer to open Normal.dot from Windows Explorer, first make sure that you have Explorer set to display Hidden files and folders (View | Options or Tools | Folder Options | View in the Explorer window). If you do not have Explorer set to display filename extensions, of course you will see “Normal” instead of “Normal.dot.” Right-click on the filename and choose Open.

And here are the ways that don’t work:

1. Double-clicking on Normal.dot in Windows Explorer. Because the default action for the .dot file type is New instead of Open, you will just create a new document based on Normal.dot.
2. Double-clicking on Blank Document in Word’s File New dialog. This also creates a new blank document.
3. Right-clicking on Blank Document in Word’s File New dialog and choosing Open. This creates a new template based on Normal.dot.

What you should never do

Sometimes “helpful” advisors will tell you to change Normal.dot or recreate it by creating a new blank document or template and saving it as Normal.dot or saving it under another name and then renaming it Normal.dot. This will not work. For details see WD2002: Styles and AutoText Are Not Copied to New Template Based on Normal.dot.

When Word creates a new Normal.dot it automatically adds built-in AutoText entries, such as those you see on the Header and Footer toolbar, it creates the built-in Rich Text (formatted) AutoCorrect entries, such as the J, and it automatically initializes the plain-text AutoCorrect entries found in your *.acl files for your default Language settings.

If you create your own Normal.dot, it will not contain the built-in AutoText entries or formatted AutoCorrect entries. You will still be able to use the plain-text AutoCorrect entries but the AutoCorrect dialog box will not perform as expected. The AutoCorrect list will appear empty the first time you open the AutoCorrect dialog box. It takes a second opening to display the plain text AutoCorrect list for your default language, and the formatted AutoCorrect entries will be missing. This behavior will occur each time you start Word.

If you make changes you shouldn’t have

Perhaps you have already customized Normal.dot in ways you don’t like, such as adding text that you don’t want to appear in every document. Or perhaps you took bad advice and saved a document over Normal.dot. In that case, you may want to start over with a fresh copy of Normal.dot. If you rename Normal.dot, a fresh, factory-default copy will be generated when you restart Word. For more information on this, see “Why is my ‘Blank Document’ not blank?”