Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 11, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
When Word runs into a problem that stops it from functioning—such as a program error or an abnormal shutdown of the program—it tries to recover any documents you were working on before. When Word is restarted, it recognizes that there were "unsaved" versions of any previously open documents, and it shows them as "recovered" documents that you can then save.
In some strange situations, it may be possible that Word recognizes your Normal.dot template file as unsaved and attempts to recover it. If this occurs, make sure you examine the file carefully to ensure that it contains only what you want it to contain. If, for instance, the recovered template contains text, and you tell Word to save the recovered file, then that text will always be visible in any new document created with Normal.dot.
If you find yourself in this situation—with unwanted text in what you expect to be a blank document—then there are a couple of things you can do to rectify the situation.
First, if you have no macros, customized toolbars, special styles, or unique AutoText entries, you can simply delete the Normal.dot file. Get out of Word completely and then use the Windows Search tool to locate the file Normal.dot. When you find it, rename it to something else or simply delete it. When you restart Word, it will recreate the template file, and the document will again be blank.
If your system does have customizations that you want to keep, follow these steps:
Besides these two methods of clearing out your Normal.dot file, there are a few others you can try, as well. The following Web page provides some good ideas on other things you can try:
http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/AppErrors/BlankDocNotBlank.htm
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (299) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Recovered Document becomes Default.
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