Stop new documents every time I switch to Word

  • Thread starter Thread starter I want my time back
  • Start date Start date
I

I want my time back

Every time I switch from another program to Word, a new blank document pops
up. About 80% of the time I want to work on an existing document, so I have
to close the new document window. This takes me about a second. In a day I
probably do this 20 times. Over the course of a year, that adds up to 82
minutes. In a decade, that's about 14 lost hours.

Can someone tell me how to turn this off? Barring that, can Microsoft please
fix this in a future upgrade?
 
I'm working on something else (Photoshop, the Internet, e-mail, etc.) and I
click on the Word icon on my Mac so I can work in Word. It's Office 2008. A
new empty document comes up. I want to make that stop -- so I can choose
whether to open a new document or an existing file.
 
I don't know how OS X works, but the Word document you left open
probably has its own icon visible somewhere, and that's what you
should click on, rather than clicking on the Word icon, i.e. asking it
to open a new file!
 
Yes, that would work if I were working on just a few documents. Right now I'm
working on about three hundred, and updating them based on e-mails I'm
receiving. (This is a story for a magazine that involves a lot of reader
feedback.) It's a small thing, but very aggravating. (Thanks for trying,
though!)

BBEdit, for example, has in preferences: "At startup: Do nothing" as an
option. This would not be hard for Microsoft to add.
 
So how does one switch between open applications normally in OS X?
Surely not by clicking on its icon to start a whole new instantiation
of the app!
 
Well, yes, except I'm not re-starting the application. If there are no open
documents, and I want to switch between programs, I click on the dashboard. I
can see which applications are open (in OS X they have a blue dot); if it's
already open it knows not to open it again. It's like picking up a tool
that's already plugged in. (On a PC, at least on my fairly old PC at home,
the programs that are open form icons on the bottom of the desktop, which I
can use to switch back and forth.) The equivalent thing in a PC would be
whenever you click on the Word icon to start using Word again, it would pop
up a new blank document.
 
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