"Create new document" - right-click option missing in Ubuntu GNOME

1. See if you have ~/Templates folder². Create one if it is missing using command:

   mkdir ~/Templates
   

2. Now create an empty file from command prompt:¹

   touch ~/Templates/Text\ File.txt
   

The "Create Document" option is back again and you can create a new text file or a new document.

¹ The backslash is used to tell the shell that the space following it is part of the filename. Since the shell recognizes spaces as delimiters between commands/options/arguments, unless you "quote it", 'quote it', or quote\ it, the shell will treat whatever comes after the space as a separate argument.

² The ~/Templates folder is localized, change his name accordingly to your localization (ex: ~/Modèles for French localization).

You can go into your ~/Templates folder and create templates yourself, then they will appear in the right-click menu. For example:

cd Templates

touch Filename.txt

This functionality has been removed from Nautilus 3.20 (either by error or on purpose). There is a bug report on it here. If it turns out to be a bug it will be fixed upstream and then will either be back in 3.22 or backported into 3.20, or if this has been done on purpose then as you can see from the LP bug report they are wanting to make it a distro specific patch.