I don't know that this thread is really "new," but I can't seem to find anything like it by searching, so... [Moderator's note - this was separately posted again in the Word forum. I combined it.]

All of my recorded macros (perhaps only 15 or 20 of them) seem to “’go away” (literally cease to exist) when I reload or save (or both) the document I’m working on. I get the dreaded question about whether I want save changes to the global template, and it doesn't seem to matter whether I answer yes or no. What I’d like to do is store my recorded macros and keyboard customizations in a different template and have it load every time I start MS Word.

What I’m currently doing is, after I find the macro list blank and sigh angrily, going to a copied text version of the VBA file with all the macros in it, copy it, and paste it into the new file (I guess it’s really getting saved in the normal.dotm file) and for the remainder of the session I can still access all my macros, but not the custom keys that I assigned them to.

As I said above, I'd like to have a template that contains all of my macros and customizations, and which loads EVERY time I run MS Word.

Or, alternately, can I somehow attach macros and customizations to a document itself, without getting the global template (which seems accident-prone)?

I'd like some pretty specific instructions about how to do this, if possible, especially regarding how and where to save my new template (rixtemplate.dotc,) how to get my macros and key customizations into it and how to be sure it loads either (1) every time I run Word, or (2) every time I load a specific document to which I attach them.

Aside: For me, as a long-term user of Word, the global template is by far the most frustrating part of working with what is, otherwise, a very decent word processor. I think it would make much more sense to have all shortcuts, macros, key assignments in a single file that could be accessed and modified as needed. Obviously that ship has already sailed, and I'm just on the dock wishin'

Any help would be great and if this post merely exposes my ignorance, it's only because that ignorance is quite real--thanks.
Rick Joslin