Can’t find your Office 2016 templates where you left them? Let’s track them down.
Quick Fix: Open File Explorer and paste
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates into the address bar. This drops you directly into the Office 2016 templates folder on Windows 11, 10, or 8.1.
What’s going on here?
Back in 2015, Microsoft shuffled Office 2016 templates out of the old “Documents and Settings” path and into the hidden AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates folder. If you’re on Windows 10 or 11, the files are still there—but Windows buries AppData by default. Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all pull from this one folder, so fixing access usually solves the problem for every Office app at once.
Here’s how to fix it
- Unhide your folders. Press Win + R, type
control folders, hit Enter, switch to the View tab, check “Show hidden files, folders, and drives,” then click OK. - Jump straight to the templates. Press Win + E, paste this into the address bar, and hit Enter:
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates - Check Word first. Fire up Word 2016, go to File ▸ Options ▸ Save. In the “Default personal templates location” box you’ll see
C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Custom Office Templates. If that folder’s empty, copy your templates from the path in step 2 into it. - Point Excel and PowerPoint the same way. In Excel: File ▸ Options ▸ Save. In PowerPoint: File ▸ Options ▸ Save. Paste the same path you used in step 3 into “Default personal templates location” and click OK.
Still nothing? Try these next
- Resurrect the Normal template. In Word, File ▸ Open, paste
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templatesagain, openNormal.dotm, tweak it if you like, then File ▸ Save. - Tell Word to trust the folder. In Word: File ▸ Options ▸ Trust Center ▸ Trust Center Settings ▸ Trusted Locations. Click Add new location, browse to
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Templates, check “Subfolders of this location are also trusted,” then OK. - Give Office a quick tune-up. Settings ▸ Apps ▸ Apps & features, find Microsoft Office 2016, click Modify ▸ Quick Repair. Reboot and test again.
How to keep templates from disappearing again
- Store templates in Custom Office Templates. That’s the default path Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all read from these days, and it survives Office updates.
- Let OneDrive carry them for you. Right-click the
Custom Office Templatesfolder → Properties ▸ Location. Change it to%USERPROFILE%\OneDrive\Documents\Custom Office Templates. Your templates now travel with you across PCs. - Use Word’s built-in template picker. In Word: File ▸ New. Click Personal; any template you save to the default location shows up here automatically.
Works for Office 2016, 2019, and perpetual Office 365 installs on Windows 11, 10, and 8.1 as of 2026. Older versions still look in Documents and Settings, which Microsoft no longer supports.
For more on trusted locations, peek at the Microsoft Support page.
