Office 2013 apps showing templates error after Sysprepping Windows 7 with CopyProfile setting

Question

Here is my setup:
I installed Windows 7 Professional.
I entered Audit Mode (which automatically logged me in as the built-in Administrator user) and installed the entire Office 2013 Professional Plus suite.
In Audit Mode, I opened Word 2013 to get through the "new user" prompts, such as the opening movie that plays in all Office 2013 programs. I did this to ensure that any new users who log into the computer would not need to sit through these "new
user" prompts.  I also rearmed Office 2013.
I ran Sysprep with the CopyProfile setting in the Unattend.xml file, with the /generalize switch, and the /oobe switch. The CopyProfile setting copies settings from the built-in Administrator account to any new user who logs into the system.
Both Windows and Office were successfully activated using KMS.
Everything seemed to work, but there is one problem: when any user -- all of which are standard users rather than administrator users -- logs into Windows and runs any Office 2013 program that has templates (such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), the templates
on the Start page do not appear. In their place, the following error message appears on the Start page where the templates would normally have been listed:
"Sorry, we had trouble getting the featured templates and can't show them right now."
Below the error message is a link that reads “Work Offline.” If you click the “Work Offline” link, the error message disappears and the templates appear as they should.  However, the error message re-occurs when the application is closed and re-opened.
If I login as the built-in Administrator account (i.e., the account I used to modify the default profile), this problem does not occur at all when using Office 2013 programs.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

"logs into Windows and runs any Office 2013 program that has templates (such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), the templates on the Start page do not appear. In their place, the following error message appears on the Start page where the templates would normally
have been listed:
"Sorry, we had trouble getting the featured templates and can't show them right now." "
Is there any chance to let you skip the Start page for Office application? I mean that try to open Office application (such Word)and go to File > Options > Untick the option "Show the Start screen when this application starts". Try to re-launch
the application again to check if the error still pop-up. If yes, I'm afraid the default build-in template is corrupted somehow and we need to copy a healthy one from another computer or totally rename normal.dotm documents from %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\template.
Afte that, please check if the issue still persists.
Here is another thread with the similar topic for your reference:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/09a69d4c-9e5f-489d-ba7b-2af79ff83596/deploying-normaldotm-through-oct-doesnt-work-in-office-2013?forum=officesetupdeploy
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-office_install/can-not-sign-into-office-2013-version/b6951c25-2fb5-4fc1-a667-2327b9da2f7f
Tony Chen
TechNet Community Support