Office products creating multiple instances- But only a certain way. Bug? Help!

I just wanted to confirm that winword /a is still working.

Both starting Word with the /a switch and starting the program in Safe mode will prevent certain components from being loaded into memory (see also https://support.office.com/en-us/article/command-line-switches-for-microsoft-office-products-079164cd-4ef5-4178-b235-441737deb3a6?omkt=en-US&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US).

As you have noticed, the most apparent difference is that Safe mode starts Word without creating a new, blank document.

Since the issue doesn't cause any real problems (although it is annoying), I guess you could just ignore it for the time being.

Check if it is still the case that the problem goes away if you start Word with the /a switch.

You could also see what happens when you start Word in application Safe mode.

Hi Stefan!

Those steps have already been tried unfortunately with no success. 

I renamed the normal template to old, forcing Microsoft to create a new template, which it did. However, with the new template the problem persisted. 

I even tried deleting my startup folders which were empty (both roaming and program files) to see if that would work. Problem still persists.

I have also tried troubleshooting COM and startup add-ins with no luck. Even after registry editing the problem continued. 

Thinking something must be really messed up, I did the full uninstall using the wizard described above. After reinstalling windows, the problem still exists.

My 0.02 is that the wizard must not uninstall everything office related, including all versions remnants and saved user information from various versions and may be conflicting the startup of new documents - albeit odd.

To confirm the existence of only one template I did a search on my entire drive for the file name which resulted in one global template. 

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Just to reiterate: This issue does NOT happen when a blank document is created from my start menu Start/ icon for microsoft word ( one instance), and within the same instance File/new/blank document to create a second instance.

The issue DOES happen when a blank document is created from my start menu "start/ icon for Microsoft word/new blank document ( one instance), and then to make another instance, I repeat that step "start/icon microsoft word/ new blank document" which in turn creates two instances, giving me a total of three instances.

Since the problem does not occur when you start Word with winword /a the most likely explanation is that a macro is the underlying cause. Exit Word and rename your Normal template. Restart Word and see if the program is now working as expected. If the issue remains, you will also have to troubleshoot COM and Startup add-ins; see Method 6 and Method 7 in the article at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/word/issues-when-start-or-use-word.