Where Are Templates Stored?

Don is at a loss as to where templates are located in Word. He created a template and added it to what he thought was the template folder, but the template doesn't show up in the New Document templates.

If you want to see what Word considers the location, then follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click Advanced at the left side of the dialog box.
3. Scroll through the list of options until you see the General section.
4. Click the File Locations button. Word displays the File Locations dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The File Locations dialog box.

In the File Locations dialog box, you can see the folders in which Word presumes you store both user templates and workgroup templates.

You should know, however, that just because Word knows this is where your templates are to be stored (in the User Templates specification), that doesn't mean that it stores new templates there by default. The reason for this is security; the templates folder is trusted, meaning that any macro stored there is trusted by Word. To avoid the chance of placing an unwanted macro into a trusted location, Word doesn't store templates, by default, in the templates folder.

Fortunately, the template folder is now a default "place" in the hierarchy shown at the left side of the Save As dialog box. Click Templates (or Custom Word Templates depending on which version of Word you are using) in the hierarchy and the file will be saved in the proper templates location (the same one you saw in the File Locations dialog box). When you later want to create a new document based on the template, in the New Document dialog box you can select My Templates at the left side of the dialog box and see the templates that you've saved. To create a document from a saved template in later versions of Word, open the New window (File | New), and click the Personal tab. You can then select the template that you created.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6013) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.