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
    2016-07-12T08:24:22+00:00

    All Word documents make use of templates. If you haven't actively selected a template for your new document, it is based on the blank document template (= Normal.dotm).

    What specific content does your template provide? Does it contain macros?

    Note that since you are using SharePoint, you may want to ask in one of the TechNet forums (start at https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/home).

    It's not a specific template content causing the issue here, but the fact that the template a document is based on is located on OneDrive instead of being locally available (note that it does not matter whether the template is synchronized to the local OneDrive folder, as Word will always try to open the template from the OneDrive servers). Or as user "mcm_ham" put it back in October: "[...] I can reproduce by creating a new template in OneDrive then a new Word document based on the template then close and attempt to open the new word document. It only happens for me if the template is stored inside OneDrive, it works if it's stored outside OneDrive, and it doesn't matter if the created Word document is stored inside OneDrive or not for either case [...]". Also, this issue is not limited to SharePoint at all.

    (For completeness sake, I experience the same issue on Windows 10 1511 with Office 365, all updates installed.)

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  2. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-11T21:20:46+00:00

    All Word documents make use of templates. If you haven't actively selected a template for your new document, it is based on the blank document template (= Normal.dotm).

    What specific content does your template provide? Does it contain macros?

    Note that since you are using SharePoint, you may want to ask in one of the TechNet forums (start at https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/home).

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-07-11T15:55:20+00:00

    We've gotten so fed up with this issue and other OneDrive for Business issues that we've banned the use of OneDrive for Business with sync'd SharePoint document sets entirely.

    And before someone asks, yes the templates are attached properly, yes we've tried a million work arounds and different combinations.

    If a user opens a word document that uses a template that is sync'd it fails to open. The only work around is to open the template first, then the document, which is not a pleasant experience (especially when you might not know in advance that it has a referenced template and you have to crash word out to use this work around).

    Disassociating the template allows the document to open fine.

    Again, using the latest, up-to-date version of Word and had this since the very beginning.

    Regards,

    Steve

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-11T07:04:06+00:00

    Are Microsoft actually going to fix this?

    Until now, I only see an unacceptable workaround, where you have to work locally.

    I have the exact same issue as the first post describes.

    And yes, it works if I open the dotx-file first, then open the document and change it to use a local template file instead.

    But that is not a solution.

    We need a fix.

    Office 2016, 16.0.4266.1003 on Windows 10 1511, all completely updated.

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  5. Stefan Blom 352.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-10T20:54:22+00:00

    Make sure that both the document and the template are downloaded to your local hard drive and that the attached template path points to the local drive. If it still doesn't work, something else is wrong.

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