Word 2016 hangs when opening a document based on a template

Anonymous
2015-10-04T11:47:18+00:00

I store my documents in:

OneDrive\Shared Documents\Business

and my templates in

OneDrive\Shared Documents\Templates

As I've done for over a year.

All worked fine in Office / Word 2013

Word 2016 will hang if I try and open a document that is based on a template.

The templates are available.

I've tried renaming the templates and removing spaces in the names but that didn't help.

If I remove the template the document will open and show as based on Normal.dotx.

All templates and documents use the new 2016 file format and are saved as .dotx.

Please note:

I'd rather you didn't reply to this issue if you haven't actually experienced this problem or if you haven't actually tried the fix you propose.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-09-18T03:55:25+00:00

    Thank you, Yves!

    This allows me to work-around the issue.

    I had to go to File -> Options -> Customize Ribbon, then select 'Developer' on the right hand side to show the Developer tab first before I could use your advice, but that's worked great now that I've done that.

    Such a frustrating issue, though and still outstanding in Windows 10 build 1511 10586.1106 and Office 2016 MSO version 16.0.4549.1000 32-bit.

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  2. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-10-31T21:12:12+00:00

    The Templates and Add-Ins dialog box lets you do the following:

    • Load a template into memory so that its building blocks, key assignments and macros are available to all documents. Such a template is often referred to as a Startup add-in (or global template).
    • Change which template is attached to the current document.

    There is an important distinction between these two actions. Normally, you want specific templates to be loaded as add-ins (and you do that by putting these templates in Word's Startup folder). Most templates should be attached to specific documents.

    Documents that do not need a specific template should have the Normal template attached to them.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-10-31T16:27:32+00:00

    Sorry but there is 8 pages to read through.  I too have had this issue and have been able to work around that is a bit annoying.  Under file -> options -> add-ins you find the manage dropdown below.  Selecting templates and go opens up the Templates and Add-ins.  In this window you should see your templates in the bottom section.  Mine are usually unchecked each initial time I open Word.  By checking the template you intend to use with opening the word document, the document does not hang up when opening.  So long as you don't close down all instances of Word it maintains the template location and opens any document using that template with no issues. 

    The problem seems to be, in my experience, that word tries to open the template/dotx used each time you open a docx file that it created from but can not find it.  This seems to happen only on the machine that the docx was created on because anyone that I send the file to can open is up with no issue. 

    I've tried to relocate the folder that word should look for templates but with no better results.

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