How to start Word with a specific template

  1. Open Word the usual way.
  2. In the template selection view, select the template you want and click Create. For example, Blog Post.
  3. When Word opened your document, click Save As and select Word Template in the Save as type drop-down box.

    Path should change automatically to your Custom Office Templates directory.
    Give your template a name. For example Blog, to keep it simple. At this point, you can close this document.

  4. On your Desktop or wherever you want, right click and select NewShortcut.

  5. In the location field, add full path to winword.exe file; default location for 2016 version is “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16”. Also, you need to specify the location and name of your template file. Mine is in “D:\_Main Documents\Documents\Custom Office Templates” so my full path will be (including quotes and template name): “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE” /t”D:\_Main Documents\Documents\Custom Office Templates\Blog.dotx”

    Make sure there is a space before /t switch and there is no space between the /t switch and template path. Click Next.

  6. Give your new shortcut a name; Blog from Word for example. Click Finish.

  7. Your new shortcut is now ready for use. Double click it and Word will open using your new template without asking anything else.

Optionally, it’s more a nice to have actually, you can personalize your shortcut with a custom icon so that you can quickly differentiate it from other Word files and shortcuts.

  1. Right click your new shortcut and select Properties.
  2. Click Change Icon… and browse to the location where you have an .ico (ICO file format is an image file format for Windows icons) file you want to use.

    If you do not have an icon to use, click Browse and in File name box type: %SystemRoot%\System32\SHELL32.dll
    Here you have quite a few old but good icons that you can choose from. Select one icon and click OK twice.

  3. Your shortcut is now fully customized and ready for use.