UPDATE: This doesn’t seem to work any more. I now just have the setting “Close windows when quitting an application” set in System Preferences – General.

Original post:

On Mac OS X Lion, Microsoft Word reopens previously edited documents when you start it up. This can be very annoying.

To stop it, run this:

defaults write com.microsoft.Word NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

You can substitute different applications for com.microsoft.Word. You can find the names in ~/Library/Saved Application State.

If you want to fix all the main Office apps (and Preview) in one go, run this script:

#!/bin/bash

function runit
{
defaults write $1 NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false
}

runit com.microsoft.Word
runit com.microsoft.Excel
runit com.microsoft.Powerpoint
runit com.apple.Preview