From one of the Microsoft’s forum user,
“I recently downloaded Office 2016 on my Mac. At first, no problems. Recently, though every time I open Word or when I exit off I get prompted with ‘Word Cannot Open the Existing Global Template. (Normal.dotm)’ or ‘Do you want to replace the existing Normal.dotm’ or ‘Changes have been made that affect the global template.Do you want to save those changes?’ I haven’t changed anything. I’ve tried various solutions to this problem but none have worked.
I’ve been having this problem in the past few days on my Mac.”
Well, you may encounter with the above kind of circumstance if you are a Mac user and using Microsoft Word 2016 on that particular machine. As it is mentioned in the situation, the error ‘Word cannot open the existing Global Template. (Normal.Dotm)’ when you try to open MS Office application or while closing the same. If you are seeing this error when trying to open Office 2016 then you won’t be able to open the files successfully.
You can also see variations of this error message. Some examples of these variant error messages are “Do you want to replace the existing Normal.dotm” or “Changes have been made that affect the global template. Do you want to save those changes?”
Cause for the error –
Normal.dotm is a template which is used as the basis for creating new blank documents. If you are seeing this message, then the most likely scenario is that the Normal.dotm are corrupted.
Solution #1: Delete Normal.dotm
Since the most likely cause of the error is corrupt Normal.dotm, deleting the corrupted file resolves the issue. Microsoft Office 2016 looks for this specific file every time you open the Microsoft Office. If the Microsoft Office can’t find the Normal.dotm file, then it creates a new one automatically. So, simply delete the corrupt file and it will automatically be recreated the next time you start Microsoft Office. To do this, follow the steps given below:
- Close Microsoft Office
- Press Command + Shift + G keys to open the Go To Folder window
- Type Macintosh HD/Users/you/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/and press Enter
- Locate a file named dotm and select it
- Press Command and Delete key (Command + Delete) to delete the file
If you find multiple normal.dotm files or a ~normal.dotm file, then deletes those too. Then on opening Microsoft Office make sure that everything should be fine.
Important: If you can’t find the normal.dotm file at the location given in step 3 then enters the location ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates and look for the normal.dotm file in there.
“Pro tip: If you are a Mac user and encountering the error ‘Word couldn’t create the Word file’ on MS Office Word, then you make use of Remo Repair Word Software and easily fix the issue.”
Solution #2: Update Microsoft Office Application
Make sure you download and install the latest updates by Microsoft Office. The latest updates have resolved the issues for a lot of users. Follow these steps in order to update MS Office:
- Open Microsoft Office
- Click Help then select Check for Updates. Note that if you can’t see, check for Updates option, scroll down and click Microsoft_AutoUpdate to download the Microsoft AutoUpdate. Once downloaded, run the downloaded file and the Check for Updates option should be available
- Click Check for updates and follow any additional on-screen instructions
Once the Office is updated, you should be good to go.
Note: Any changes that you make to Normal.dotm will be applied to documents that you create in the future.