word97 templates

I work on winXP with word97 Hebrew/English. Yes, I know, it is an old program, but I am quite old too and this suits exactly to my type of work.
And here is my problem.
A lot of icons on the toolbars are unnecessary for my work and only clogg the view.
So I try to open the new document with toolbars with icons suitable for my work.
I arranged already the icons on the toolbars and saved the whole document as template under the name “newpage” in the templates folder as shown in the ‘file locations”, but when I open the program and click File>new> newpage – I receive the same document form as before. The new icons which I put on toolbars don’t appear.
Then when I try to close the Word window it asks “do you want to save changes?” and “changes were made in your Hnormal template, do you want to save them” etc.
Whatever I do, the new arrangement is lost.
Please advise what did I do wrong, and what shall I proceed to have the appropriate toolbars for my work when openng a new page.
Thanks