I was using Word 2016 and had a large number of custom templates; then that PC died.



For now, I'm using the 365 version trial on my new PC. I need to migrate my old Word environment to it.

How do I:

1) Get it to recognize and show me the templates from my old PC? They were intact on the old hard drive, which I can read from a dock, and I have copied them over to the directory where normal.dotx is on the new machine. But I don't know how to access and use them, now.

2) Migrate my old settings (ribbon, custom keystrokes, etc.)? They are also on the old drive, but I don't know how to find and recognize them, or where they should go on the new PC.

Templates:
This depends on how you are trying to access them.
File New Variations in the Versions of Word
MS regularly plays with (changes) how users access their custom templates.
There are two key locations:
Custom Office Templates folder - should have been used in Word 2016
User Templates Folder - where your normal template resides and where the legacy File New dialog looks.

Settings:
See the "sticky" post on this forum: Word 2007 & Later Key Data File Locations
Many of your settings are in your normal template, but not all.

I'm confused.

I gather I need the normal.d* template from my old install and to tell W365 to use that. And I have old normal files. But:

1) I thought Word 2016 stored templates as *.dotx, and word365 stores them as *.dotm.

2) I have a bunch of *.dotx files on my old PC's drive, but no normal.dotx. What I do have are normal.dot, whose date is about right for my last settings and a normal.dotm from a year earlier (puzzling, as I don't recall having office365 on the old machine).

So is my old normal.dot likely to be what I'm after? If I move it to the folder where Word365 has its templates, how do I get it to use that file?

Did you read the linked files? I know they are long but this is complicated.


Word has never used a file named Normal.dotx.
Since Word 2007, Word's Normal Template has been named Normal.dotm.
Any file you have that is named Normal.dotx is spurious, a mistake.


Find your old Normal.dotm file.
Where is the Normal Template / How to Find the Normal Template


Rename it to something like MyNormal.dotm.
Copy that and put it in your Word Startup Folder for your new installation.
This will install any customizations stored in that template on your new computer except for page layout and styles.