Templates in Word are saved in the .dot, .dotx or .dotm formats. Your description suggests you've been using documents saved in the .doc, .docx and/or .docm formats and calling them templates, which they are not. Your description also suggests that, even when you'd used the dotx format, your current process opens the template for editing, rather than creating a new document from it. Without changing your use of documents, you could apply the Windows read-only attribute to them, meaning they could not be saved over.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]