An Alert about Building Blocks Appears When Word Quits

• What happens: When you quit Word, this alert message appears: “You have modified styles, building blocks (such as cover pages or headers) or other content that is stored in "Building Blocks". Do you wish to save changes to "Building Blocks"?” This alert message appears even though you didn’t modify content stored in Building Blocks.

• What this means: By default, starting Contract Tools causes Word to load building blocks (search for “building block” in Word Help to learn more). When some versions of Word 2016 and later (including Word for Microsoft 365) load building blocks, they incorrectly assume that building blocks stored in a file named Building Blocks.dotx have been modified. Visit Archived Release notes for Monthly Channel releases, Version 1912: January 08 for a description of this issue and its resolution by Microsoft Support.

• What you should do: To dismiss the alert message and quit Word, click Save or Don't Save. To stop the alert message from appearing, update Word; search for “install Office updates” in Word Help to learn how. If you can’t update Word, you can mitigate this issue by configuring Contract Tools not to load snippets when it starts.

Note: Even if Contract Tools is configured not to load snippets when it starts, causing affected versions of Word to load building blocks (for example, by showing the Snippets view, or by choosing Insert > Quick Parts) will cause the Building Blocks alert message to appear when Word quits.

For general information about snippets, see Working with Snippets. To learn how snippets in Contract Tools relate to building blocks in Word, see Snippets and Building Blocks.