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.
Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2021 or Microsoft 365. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word Step by Step today!
Word's default black text and a white page background may not appeal to everyone. Here's how you can easily change the ...
Discover MoreIf you like to see your open documents in multiple icons on the Taskbar, you may wonder how to make that happen. This is ...
Discover MoreThere are scores of shortcut keys defined in Word. If you want to discover what all those shortcut keys are, here are a ...
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