Microsoft Office Forums - View Single Post - Migrating Word 2007 on XP to Office 365 on Win 10

Guessed · 02-09-2020, 12:34 AM

Jennifer

The default template location would be in your application data\Microsoft\Templates folder. You will find that this is where your Normal.dotm template sits. Because the Application Data folder varies depending on your Windows version and login name, it is easiest to get there by pasting the following string into the folder path box in File Explorer
%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates

There are subtle differences in the file formats of each of the versions of Word since 2007. If you open a dotx or docx file from an older version of Word it will show as Compatibility Mode. You can convert your file to the current version by going to File > Info and clicking the button that says Convert (next to the Compatibility Mode instructions). You can also convert a file to a particular version by running a line of vba code like
ActiveDocument.SetCompatibilityMode wdWord2010

If your template is saved in a previous version of Word, all the new docs it produces will be in that version.

You can open each template itself and convert it to match the version of Word you now have. WARNING: There are some knowledgeable people on this forum who say this is a bad idea (in relation to Normal.dotm itself) and that you should create a template from new in the version of Word you are using. I disagree with that position and in my experience it has never been a problem for me.