How to reset all styles to MS Word defaults?

My document was imported from LibreOffice Writer and has styles defined from that: Writer default styles How do I restore them all to the MS Word defaults? MS Word new document default styles

I'm using Word 2016


If you attach your Normal template to the document, it should return all styles to your defaults.

If you don't see the "Developer" tab in your ribbon:

  1. Click File.
  2. Click Options.
  3. Click Customize Ribbon.
  4. On the right side of the window, in the Main Tabs, click the check box next to Developer.
  5. Click OK.

From Developer tab in the ribbon:

  1. Click Document Template.
  2. In the Document template section, click the Attach... button.
  3. The dialog box should default to your Templates folder (AppData > Roaming> Microsoft > Templates). Select Normal and click Open.
  4. Click the Automatically update document styles check box.
  5. Click OK.

Attaching the normal template to the document resets all styles to the current default.

However, I believe what the question actually wants is how to reset all styles to the default default, if that makes any sense. It appears that they have mistakenly changed the Word defaults to match the imported defauts. This is the problem I just had, and I was about to just reinstall Microsoft Office entirely when I found this method.

  1. Close Word, if it is open.
  2. Go to C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates (replace "C" with whatever drive Windows is installed on)
  3. Delete Normal.dotm
  4. Open Word, create a new document using no template
  5. Close Word

This will force Word to generate and save a new unaltered normal.dotm file. You could then apply this to your existing document as well.