A well written summary.

In Word 2002 and later, a "Blank Document" icon appeared on the toolbar.
This button does NOT necessarily create documents from Normal.dot. There
are specific circumstances under which Normal.dot may not exist in these
applications. If it doesn't, the blank document is produced directly from
Word's hard-coded defaults. That may be what they were referring to.

New icon in 2002? Which toolbar?

I was under the impression that, no matter what, a Normal.dot always
existed - at least in memory. Under what circumstances is this not the case?

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Enjoy,
Tony