How to remove tabs and templates from Word 2013’s classic File>New dialog

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I’m posting this as I’ve found a lot of forums and articles about how one can rearrange the Start Page so it shows custom templates and not the assortment of relatively useless templates supplied by Microsoft.

As far as the classic File>New dialog is concerned, I’ve been using the registry solution for Word 2010, but it stopped working with Word 2013. After reading many articles and forum questions, it became clear there was no way around it.

Not really satisfied with that, I began mining the registry and I’ve found the key. Find:

ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice15.0ClickToRunREGISTRYMACHINESoftwareClassesInstallerComponents8F622368F04F7B849A7B2021EE668F21

…and rename it by placing “NOT” in front of the existing alpha-numeric, which will allow you to reverse it easily. (So will repairing Office.)

This entry exists on my installations of Office 365 AND Office 2013 stand-alone (both 32-bit) on two different computers running Win 7 64-bit.

NOTE: I’ve lived with this for only a day or so, and for me it has worked perfectly. If you decide to try it yourself, back up the registry and edit with care. Your mileage may vary, but hopefully it will continue to work as the previous workaround did.

I’ll report back if anything unhappy comes up. My fingers are crossed, even as I do the happy dance.

Kim

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Does this convert Ctrl+N or Alt+F,N to display the classic FileNew dialog or does this have to do with getting rid of unwanted tabs in that dialog once you get it?

From your title, I suspect the latter. I am not seeing any difference in my (highly customized) Word 2013 installation.

FileNew Variations in Microsoft Word

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Hi Charles,

I’m with you. I’ve put both the New File dialog and New doc from template on my toolbar and/or QAT since Word 97.

My post simply removes the unwanted tabs and templates once the dialog is displayed. It’s the quickest and most straight-forward way to display work group templates (short of taking up precious QAT or Ribbon space with individual templates) and I don’t want it junked up with Microsoft’s plentiful and not particularly useful offerings.

I was cranky when it appeared the simple workaround for 2010 no longer worked around this in 2013, and was happy to find it hadn’t disappeared, but had been hidden most cunningly.

Kim

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