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Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill You can actually get some help in template creation from Word's online Help if you look under “templates, creating.” But first you need to understand what a template is. The natural tendency of most users of word processing applications is to create a document and use it as a model for future documents. That is, you format a letter the way you want all (or most) of your letters to look, save it, and then, when you want to write a letter, open this document and save it under another name as the starting point for your letter. In WordPerfect, until recently, this was the only way to create a template. Word uses a different approach. Instead of opening the template itself, you create a document based on the template. A template in Word is not a document file, and you will rarely open it directly. It has a different file extension from a document (.dot instead of .doc) and is stored in a different location. Word comes with a number of built-in templates (and Wizards, which automate the creation of a document based on a choice of templates), but, unless you modify the button's function, what you get when you press the New button on the Standard toolbar is a Blank Document based on the Normal template, Normal.dot, on which all other templates are based. Some changes that you make to Normal.dot will be reflected in other templates. For example, if you change the default font size of Normal style there, then it will be changed for Normal style everywhere (unless you specifically change it in another template). And other changes you make will at least be reflected in every document you base on the Normal template. If you add a header or footer to Normal.dot, for example, it will appear in every new document (not at all what you want for a sheet of labels!). For this reason it is usually a good idea to leave Normal.dot alone (a lot of your settings, such as shortcut key assignments and custom toolbars, will be stored there anyway, so that they are available to all templates) and make a custom template for each specific task you routinely do. That said, there are two basic ways to create a template. You can start from scratch, selecting New from the File menu and checking the radio button for Template instead of Document in the dialog box when you create a new file. When you save the file, it will automatically be saved as a template. Or you can create a template from a new or existing document. Whenever you have a document that has formatting you want to repeat in another document, you can Save As and under “Save as type” choose “Document Template (*.dot).” The file will automatically be saved in Word's Template folder (or a subfolder you choose) using the filename you assign. The next time you choose File | New, you will see the template you have saved. Double-click on it and you will create a new document that incorporates the page setup, styles, and other formatting you have set, along with any boilerplate text you have left in the template. Eventually you will get tired of having to use File | New to access your custom templates. When this happens, use Customize to remove the “New” button from the toolbar (that is, FileNewDefault, which creates a new document based on Normal.dot) and substitute “New...” (that is, FileNew, which will open the File New dialog and give you access to all your templates). You will see a number of tabs in the File New dialog. Except for General, which represents the root Templates folder, the labels on the tabs reflect the names of the subfolders in the Templates folder. You can create additional subfolders of your own, and they will be added as new tabs (in Word 2000 you will not see the tabs unless the folders actually contain templates). You can also move files from one folder to another (in Windows Explorer), and they will be moved from one tab to another accordingly. Templates and Styles in Word are your strongest allies in making creation of customized documents easy and straightforward. Note that when you add AutoText or create customized toolbars or macros or keyboard shortcuts, you can choose whether to store them in Normal.dot or in the template on which a given document is based. This allows you to have certain tools restricted to a given template, without cluttering up documents for which they are not suitable. The more you explore Word's capabilities, the more you will learn to do. For more about the creation and use of styles in templates, see John McGhie's article Creating a Template (Part II). |
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