How to Bypass or Completely Disable Start Screen in Microsoft Office 2013 Applications?

Similar to Windows 8, Microsoft has also added the new “Start Screen” to its upcoming Office suite version Office 2013. Whenever you launch an Office 2013 program such as Microsoft Word, a new Start Screen is shown which helps you in creating a new file quickly and easily using the built-in templates or opening existing files.

Although its a nice addition to Office 2013 apps but many users are not liking it. They just want to turn this new Start Screen off and get direct access to main program window instead of the new Start Screen.

Actually its possible to disable Start Screen in Office 2013 programs and I mentioned the method to disable it in following tutorial in past (check the bonus tip given at the end):

Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration to Fix Font and Cursor Hanging Problems in Office 2013

But after getting frequent emails regarding the same problem, today I decided to create a new dedicated topic for it.

So this tutorial will allow you to skip, bypass or disable new Start Screen in Office 2013 programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

I have divided this tutorial in 2 parts:

• Skip or Bypass Start Screen in Office 2013
• Completely Disable Start Screen in Office 2013

So without wasting time, lets start the tutorial:

1. Skip or Bypass Start Screen in Office 2013

If you just want to skip or bypass Start Screen in Office 2013 programs, simply press Esc key or press Enter key to create new document using the default blank template.

2. Completely Disable Start Screen in Office 2013

If you want to completely disable Start Screen in Office 2013 programs so that it doesn’t appear next time you launch an Office program, check out following steps:

1. Open an Office 2013 program and click on “File” menu present in the ribbon. Now click on “Options” link given at the end of the left-sidebar.

2. It’ll open Options window. Now look for an option “Show the Start screen when this application starts” given at the bottom in Options window as shown in following screenshot:

3. Uncheck the option and click on OK button.

4. That’s it. It’ll immediately turn off the new Start Screen in that particular Office program. If you want to disable Start Screen in other Office programs such as Excel, PowerPoint, you’ll need to follow the same steps in those programs as well.

So you can see its not a difficult task. It would have been really better if Microsoft also allowed Windows 8 users to disable its Start Screen…

Also check:

Registry Tweak to Disable Start Screen for All Applications in Microsoft Office 2013