Stop requesting save changes to document template

Well, this should contribute to your frustration with 2013.  (I totally agree with your assessment of 2013 and Windows 8 - i won't allow 8 on my computers.)  I got rid of my Dell xps14 laptop (poorest excuse for a Dell laptop ever) which required that I reinstall 2013 on my new laptop (Maingear Pulse17 - what a machine!)  and Word no longer asks about saving the template.  this reinforces my complaint that the implementation is buggy and lacks defined rules.  Nonetheless, I am happy to be rid of that ANNOYING dialog box question. Of course, the bugs continue.  On both laptops, word will frequently present a ghost of a document in the task bar, but will not switch to the document or the ghost.  This behavior is apparently entirely random, with the possible exception that it is programmed to happen when you are in a hurry to get something done.  Microsoft tech support insists that i must pay them $150 to get their "assistance" with their bug, which I am obviously not going to do (last time microsoft actually solved a problem with tech support was in 1997, when it was still free).

Happy motoring.

When I have had a problem either with a prompt to save the template (unnecessarily) or a failure to save the template, the cause has always turned out to be an add-in. At one time, the Adobe PDFMaker add-in would trigger a save prompt, and PDFComplete causes the Normal template not to be saved.

Very, very briefly, a SnagIt add-in caused a save prompt, but alert Word MVPS contacted TechSmith (providing revised code), and that error was caught quite quickly. Would that other software publishers were as responsive!

I solved this by uninstalling the Bluetooth program, which I had no use for.

The answers given here are awful. The fire alarm analogy is stupid. If your fire alarm is put out of work, what's the worst that could happen? A fire goes off, there is no alarm, and your house and perhaps the whole city burns down.

If your Microsoft Word template changes without your knowing it, what's the worst that could happen? Uh, not much, besides the Microsoft Word template changing without your knowing it.

It is my analogy and I think it is apt, if perhaps a little dramatic. The thing is that the template being referred to is the "normal" template in Word. It houses much of what makes the program work the way it does. The message that something is trying to change that is an important one to Word users.

Normal Template

Changes to that template can make Word stop working, or work in very unpredictable and unpleasant ways.

In my business, if Word stops working I may be out of business. I will at least be shut down until I can figure out an alternative. Changes to the normal template by malicious software are real. So are stupid changes made by well-meaning software. I want changes to my normal template to be ones that I know about and approve.

With a smoke detector that keeps going off, I look for the source of the smoke. I do not simply turn the smoke detector off and assume that everything is fine now that the alarm is no longer going off.

With the Word alert, I look for the source of the change if that source is not a deliberate change that I made. You did that - you unistalled the Add-In. You did not, I hope, turn off the alarm.

Thanks for your response.  Add-ins could be the problem.  Reinstalled on new computer and no longer happens.

If you review my rant below, maybe you have seen the ghost issue.  I decided to send a letter to microsoft's general counsel b/c I am not going to pay for them to fix it.  Very annoying.  Happens with other office 2013 apps.  If you attempt to open a file, either from within the app or from explorer, the file will appear as a ghost with no content on the task bar and it is impossible to get it to actually open as a window. This can happen 1 time or 10 times depending on ???  I have had to actually reboot the computer at times to get a file to open.  I suppose I should have kept a journal of the incidents.  It is possible it happens every other Tuesday - haven't discerned rhyme or reason.

As stated in earlier messages in this thread, many changes that you can make in Word involve templates, even if you haven't explicitly changed the template. That is why you get prompted. Of course, nothing prevents you from turning off the "Prompt to save Normal template" option (but you should carefully consider the potential risks mentioned earlier in this thread).