It is important to distinguish between "opening" and "creating" a document based on a template. These are distinct actions and the latter is preferred.

Take a look at the Ask Field Tutorial. It has sample documents showing how ASK and FILL-IN fields work in documents and templates together with vba code to assist in implementing these. It shows the distinction between opening a document and creating a new document, as well. This was written about 10 years ago and works with Word 2007 and Word 2010 as well as earlier versions.