What to do when a new blank document in Word does not open blank?

It happens sometime that when you open or create a new blank document in MS Word it does not open blank and instead show the text of some old document. This issue mainly occurs due to problem in global template i.e. Normal.dot file. The Normal template is a special kind of Word file that contains text, style, macros, toolbar etc. All the documents that you create in Word are based on Normal template. So the above problem may occur if:

• Normal template is damaged.
• Some text, image has been accidently added to the Normal template.
• More than one version of Normal template exists.
• Delete the add-ins and other templates.
• Corruption in MS Word.

So here I am discussing the various methods to resolve this issue:

Delete the extraneous or unexpected content from Normal.dot file: Follow below steps to delete the contents:

1. Go to Start-> Search-> All files and folders.
2. Search for normal.dot file.
3. After searching, right click the Normal.dot file and click Open.
4. Delete the unwanted content and save the file.

Rename the Normal.dot file:

1. Go to Start-> Search-> All files and folders.
2. Search for normal.dot file.
3. After searching, right click the Normal.dot file and click Rename.
4. Rename the file as Normal. Old. Similarly rename the entire Normal.dot file that appears in the search result.
5. Now Start Word to see if it still contains the unexpected text.

Delete the add-ins and other global templates:

1. Open Word; go to Tools -> Template and Add-Ins.
2. Remove all the template and add-in and close Word.
3. Now again start Word and if the document is still not blank, try another method.

Delete macros:

1. Open Word; go to Tools-> Macro-> Macros.
2. Type the name of the macro that you want to delete and click Delete.
3. Restart Word and check if it contains unwanted text or not.