Why does Microsoft Word's default template (Normal.DOT) swell to an enormous size over time, causing files saved with that template to grow to disgusting sizes (by "disgusting" I mean "twice the size of similar files saved seven years ago")? Does anyone know of a solution for this, besides replacing the old 1.5-megabyte Normal.DOT like I did?

And yes, I still use Word 2003.

Download LibreOffice. It's easily the best office suite I've ever used, plus it's totally free!

Although a template doing that is... perplexing, to say the least, it makes a lot of sense when you consider that it's old software and it's probably losing it's touch with reality or... something, I really don't know. You'd be better off upgrading to something else, in all honesty.

I'm sure it's deliberately designed to fall apart so you're forced to buy the latest office software from Microsoft that offers nothing particularly new or important to have every 4 years or so.

The free office software out there is really good though, AbiWord, LibreOffice, or even Google Docs is a great replacement for older Microsoft Office versions.

Apparently Normal.DOT is revised every time you open a new document, and the template becomes slightly more corrupt every time you do that.

I'm not familiar with AbiWord and LibreOffice, but I'll definitely look into them. Google Docs is already my application of choice when I need to make a spreadsheet. And frankly, even good old Word '97 is still quite serviceable, as long as you don't rely too heavily on its boneheaded spelling/grammar checker.