When you launch a modern Microsoft Office 365 application (like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint), you are no longer taken straight to a blank document. Instead, Microsoft intercepts you with the “Start Screen.” This is a massive landing page displaying a gallery of pre-made templates (like calendars, resumes, and budgeting sheets), a search bar, and a list of your recently opened files.
While this is helpful for users who frequently rely on Microsoft’s templates, it is an annoying extra step for professionals who simply want to open the application and start typing immediately. The Start Screen forces you to manually click “Blank Document” or “Blank Workbook” every single time you launch the program, completely breaking your workflow. If you want Office to function like classic software and instantly dump you into a blank page the exact millisecond the program opens, you must disable the Start Screen.
Disabling the Start Screen via Options
You can completely bypass this landing page directly from the application’s built-in options menu. Note that you will need to perform this action individually for each Office application (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) you wish to change.
- Open the Microsoft Office application of your choice (e.g., Microsoft Word).
- Bypass the Start Screen by clicking Blank document to enter the main editing interface.
- Look at the main menu ribbon at the top of the screen and click on File (in the top-left corner).
- Scroll all the way down the blue sidebar on the left and click on Options (usually the very last item).
- A new Options window will appear. In the left-hand menu, ensure you are on the General tab.
- Scroll down the main panel until you find the very bottom section, labelled Start up options.
- Look for a checkbox labelled Show the Start screen when this application starts.
- Click the checkbox to uncheck it.
- Click the OK button at the bottom of the window to save your changes.
From this point forward, the template gallery is dead. The next time you click the Word or Excel icon on your taskbar, the software will load directly into a crisp, blank document, instantly ready for your keystrokes without demanding any unnecessary mouse clicks.