Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 30, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
Each time Ray starts Word, he gets a blank document that, in the title bar, shows a document name of "Document1." Lately, though, he's been seeing document names such as "Document986," "Document554," and "Document1281." Ray is not sure what is causing this weird numbering in the document names and he wonders how he can get Word back to the traditional document naming.
The document names such as "Document1," "Document2," etc. are placeholder names. Every time you restart Word, numbering of the documents should again start at 1. Theoretically, if you leave Word running on your system and create a lot of new documents, then eventually you'll get to very large numbers, such as "Document1281." What you should never get, however, is numbers out of sequence, and the sequence always restarts when you restart Word.
If the numbers have no rhyme or reason, then there are a couple of things you can try. First, get out of Word completely and use the search capabilities of Windows to search for ~*.* (that's a tilde followed by asterisk dot asterisk). Take a look at what is returned by Windows, and you can probably safely delete whatever was located.
If you restart Word and find that this did not fix the issue, then you will probably want to repair your installation of Office. You can do so by following the instructions on this page:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/repair-an-office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12943) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.
The First and Last Word on Word! Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate Word 2013. Spend more time working and less time trying to figure it all out! Check out Word 2013 For Dummies today!
Word can understand many different measurement units. One common unit understood by Word is the pica, described in this tip.
Discover MoreOne way you can navigate through a document is to jump from section to section. Here's the traditional way to quickly get ...
Discover MoreWant to use the mouse to control the zoom level for your document? You can do it by combining your mouse use with the ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2022-07-31 09:13:29
Tony Nixon
This does not work for me at all: it seems to return every file and directory on my PC
even if I enter
"~*.* name:" without the quotes in the search box.
Have I misunderstood something?
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments