Creating a Template – The Basics (Part I)

Article contributed by Suzanne S. Barnhill

You can actually get some help in template creation from Word's online Help if you look under “templates, creating.” (In Word 2007, look at the “How to create a template” portion of the Help topic “Creating Microsoft Office Word 2007 templates.”) But first you need to understand what a template is, what it is not, and when you need to create one. Then we’ll look at the basics of how to create a template.

What is a template?

In the most general sense, a template is a pattern or model on which something else is based. It might be a shape that you trace around or an outline of suggested content. In Word, however, the word template has a specific technical sense; it is a particular kind of file, with a different file extension from a document (.dot, .dotx, or .dotm instead of .doc or .docx).

Templates in Word are generally stored in a different location from documents, and you will rarely open one directly after creating it. Instead, you will use it as the basis for creating new documents.

Word comes with a number of built-in templates, but you may be unaware of them if you have never visited the dialog where they live. What you get when you press Ctrl+N to create a new document in any version is a Blank Document based on the default template, which is called Normal (Normal.dotm in Word 2007, Normal.dot in previous versions), but Word also offers templates expressly designed for specific types of documents: letters, reports, fax cover sheets, and the like. These are accessed as follows:

• Word 2000 and earlier: Select New… on the File menu. This opens the New dialog (see figure below).

• Word 2002 and 2003: Select New… on the File menu. This opens the New Document task pane, where you can either select a recently used template or click on “General Templates” (Word 2002) or “On my computer…” (Word 2003) to open the Templates dialog (which is just the New dialog with a different name).

• Word 2007: Click the Office Button and select New. This opens the New Document dialog, which initially displays “Blank and recent” templates—that is, the Blank Document and any other templates you have used recently. The Recently Used Templates pane will be empty until you have used other templates, which you can find under Installed Templates (the ones that ship with Word) or My templates… (the ones you have created).

Many, many more templates are available for download from the Office Template Gallery, which can be accessed directly from Word 2002 and above:

• Word 2002: In the New Document task pane, click  “Templates on Microsoft.com.”

• Word 2003: In the New Document task pane, click on “Templates on Office Online.”

• Word 2007: In the New Document dialog, click on Microsoft Office Online.

What a template is not

Although many of the templates you can download from Microsoft Office Online contain sample content, a template is not really about content but about structure and layout. A template is designed to provide specific page layout (page size and orientation, margins, number of columns, and so on), and styles for the types of paragraphs most likely to be used in the given type of document.  It may also contain tools to facilitate using the included styles and other features

In Word 2007 and 2010, these tools may include Building Blocks and a customized Quick Access Toolbar and/or Ribbon. In Word 2003 and earlier, they may also include custom menus and toolbars. In all versions, they may include macros, keyboard shortcuts, and AutoText entries.

Some templates do contain boilerplate content: a template for a letter, for example, will perhaps have a letterhead on the first page, page numbering, and perhaps an automatic date field. In addition to custom styles for the parts of a letter (Inside Address, Reference Line, Salutation, Body Text, Complimentary Close, Signature, Copy List, and so on), it may have dummy paragraphs or text entry fields indicating where these parts go.

In general, however, the content of a document is up to the writer. Users often ask for “templates” for very specific content, such as a letter protesting an unfair dismissal or a letter to customers of a business thanking them for their patronage. You may actually find such samples among those available in the Template Gallery at Microsoft Office Online. Viewed from a layout perspective, however, such letters are just letters. They can be created using a generic letter template or from scratch, assuming the writer knows how to write a letter. What the user is really looking for is a model or sample document that would provide suggested wording for such a letter. That is not what a “template” is in Word.

On the other hand, users’ needs are sometimes are more related to layout: “a Request for Proposal template to hire a building designer for a residence” or “a restaurant evaluation sheet template” or “a flyer template for an AA – Al-Anon Event.” In such cases, finding a readymade template is unlikely, though it may be possible to find a generic template that can be adapted. In the last analysis, however, the user is still looking for a model or sample rather than a template—just something to copy or build on; even a sample document would suffice.

When to create a template

There are several ways to create a new document in Word:

•  Click New on the Standard toolbar (Word 2003 and earlier) or select Blank Document in the New Document dialog in Word 2007. Alternatively, press Ctrl+N. This will create a new Blank Document based on the Normal template, which contains all the styles available in Word. You can modify these styles as desired, and you can change the layout of the document in any way you wish.

Note: By default the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) in Word 2007 does not have a New button that automatically creates a new document based on the Normal template. To add the New button, click the arrow (More button) at the end of the QAT and then click New.

• Open an existing document as the basis for a new one. 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. While this technique is a practical approach in some instances, there is always a risk that you will forget to use Save As and will instead overwrite your original document.

• Create a new document using an existing document as a quasi-template. This is a way to reuse a document without risk because a document created this way is unnamed; the first time you click the Save button or press Ctrl+S, you will get the Save As dialog, which requires you to name the document and choose a place to save it.

• Word 2002 and 2003: In the New Document task pane, choose New | From existing document… Browse for the document in the New from Existing Document dialog and click on Create New.

• Word 2007: New from existing… is one of the options in the New Document dialog. Browse for the document in the New from Existing Document dialog and click on Create New.

• You can actually accomplish the same thing in any version of Word by right-clicking on a document file in the Open dialog or Windows Explorer/My Computer and choosing New.

• Create a new document based on a different template, either one of those that ship with Word (Installed Templates) or one you have created, by selecting it in the New, Templates, or New Document dialog.

The whole point of a Word template is to create a format that can be used over and over again. Accordingly, it is unnecessary and a waste of time to create a template for a single-use document. Creating a template for letters makes sense; creating a template for a letter protesting one’s unfair dismissal does not. A template for flyers for AA – Al-Anon events may make sense if the events are frequent and the flyers should be consistent in design; if the event is a one-off, a document will suffice.

So, before you set out to create a template, you should ask yourself whether it is something you would use repeatedly. Often this realization comes after you’ve recreated the same document format numerous times, changing margins, modifying styles, changing fonts. It occurs to you that you could save time in the creation of such documents if you didn’t have to make all these changes. That’s when you need a template.

In addition, there are advantages to true templates that cannot be achieved with documents used as templates. Although it is now possible to save macros, a customized QAT (toolbars and  menus in earlier versions), and keyboard shortcuts in documents, Building Blocks (AutoText entries in earlier versions) must still be saved in templates. And the New/Templates/New Document dialog actually makes it easier to access templates than to search for documents.

If you create a specific kind of document (such as letters) almost exclusively, your first impulse may be to just make the necessary changes to the Normal template, so that you get a document formatted the way you want when you click the New button. This can be a solution up to a point, but please note the caveats expressed in “How to change the default settings for Word documents.” In particular, it is not a good idea to add a header or footer to the Normal template because this will affect the layout of labels.

For this reason it is usually a good idea to leave the Normal template alone (a lot of your settings, such as shortcut key assignments and—in previous versions—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.

How to create a template

There are two basic ways to create a template:

1. You can start from scratch, selecting New… from the File or Office Button menu and checking the radio button for Template instead of Document in the dialog box when you create a new file.

The above is the author’s personal New dialog, which includes many custom tabs and templates.
The Installed Templates have been copied to dedicated folders and then uninstalled
(so as to reduce the number of tabs they require).

• You can base your template on any existing template, including the Normal template (represented in the New dialog by “Blank Document”). If you base a new template on Blank Document (which you will find in My templates… in Word 2007), it will not actually be based on the Normal template but rather on the default settings (that is, the out-of-the-box Normal template rather than the current version with any modifications you may have made).

•  When you save the file, it will automatically be saved as a template, using the filename you assign. The default save location will be Word’s Templates folder (or a subfolder you choose). In Word 2003 or earlier, the file format will be .dot. In Word 2007, the default template format is .dotx, but you can also choose .dot (if you want the template to be usable in earlier versions) or .dotm (if it contains macros).

2. 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 a template format.

• In Word 2003 and earlier, the only choice is “Document Template (*.dot).” In Word 2007, you have a choice of .dot, .dotx, and .dotm, as described above.

•  In Word 2003 and earlier, the save location will be automatic (as with Method 1). In Word 2007, however, the file location is not automatically selected for you. You can save the template anywhere, but if you want it to appear in the New Documents dialog, you must save it in the Templates folder (accessed via the Trusted Templates link in the Places Bar of the Save dialog)

When you use the first method and base your new template on an existing one (other than Normal), the new template will inherit all the macros, custom toolbars or menus, toolbar or menu customizations, shortcut key assignments, and AutoText entries or Building Blocks that are stored in that template. Since these customizations are not stored in documents based on the template, a template created using the second method will not include them. A template created by either method will, however, contain the styles and layout of the parent template (though you may choose to modify them).

Another advantage to using the first method in Word 2007 (as noted above) is that Word defaults to the Templates folder when you save the template. If you use the second method, you must manually navigate to the Templates folder (or other save location).

Using your new template

The next time you choose File | New… or Office Button | New, you will see the template you have saved. In Word 2007, it will be in the Recent Used Templates pane, at least to begin with; you can access it at any time from the New dialog that opens when you click on My templates… Double-click on your template 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.

In the New/Templates dialog, you will see a number of tabs. Except for General, which represents the root Templates folder, the labels on the tabs reflect the names of subfolders in the Templates folder. You can create additional subfolders of your own, and they will be added as new tabs (in Word 2000 and above, you will not see the tabs unless the folders actually contain templates). You can also move files from one folder to another, and they will be moved from one tab to another accordingly.

In Word 2000 and above, the installed templates (those that ship with Word) are saved in a different location from Normal.dot and user-created templates; you must create new subfolders (tabs) in the folder that is assigned for user templates. If you want to add your own templates to one of the tabs that contain installed templates, you must create a new subfolder the name of which is exactly the same as the label on the dialog tab. For more on this and other template issues, see “Frequently asked questions about the location of Word 2002 templates” (this Word 2002 article has links to versions for Word 2000 and Word 2003; the Word 2003 article actually covers Word 2007 as well).

Eventually you may get tired of having to go through a menu to access your custom templates, especially in Word 2002/2003, where this command opens the New Document task pane. When this happens, you can add a button to the Standard toolbar (Word 2003 and earlier) or QAT (Word 2007) to provide direct access to your templates:

• Word 97 and 2000: Open Tools | Customize and select the Commands tab. In the File category, select the New… command and drag it to the Standard toolbar. This button will run the FileNew command, which opens the New dialog, as contrasted with the existing New button, which runs the FileNewDefault command, which creates a new document based on Normal.dot. Since the button icons are identical, you may want to use the button image editor to modify one of them (right-click on the button and choose Edit Button Image), or, if you will be using your own templates most of the time, you may just want to drag the New button off the toolbar (you can still use Ctrl+N to create a new Blank Document).

• Word 2002 and 2003: The process is similar to that for Word 97 and 2000 except that the New… command opens the New Document task pane. You must therefore select the All Commands category and locate the FileNewDialog command. Because this command  has no button image, when you drag it to a toolbar, it will have a text label: Other… If you want to use the button image from the New button, right-click on it and choose Copy Button Image, then right-click on the Other… button and choose first Default Style…, then Paste Button Image. Again, you may want to edit this image or remove the New button.

• Word 2007: In Office Button | Word Options | Customize, there are several “New” buttons you can add to the QAT, and they are somewhat confusingly labeled. If you select All Commands in the Customize dialog, you will see all four of them: New, New…, New Blank Document, and New Document or Template. “New” and “New Blank Document” both run the FileNewDefault command, creating a new Blank Document (based on Normal.dotm). “New…” opens the New Document dialog you get if you use Office Button | New. And “New Document or Template” takes you directly to the classic New dialog (accessed via My templates… in the New Document dialog) that displays both the installed templates and your custom templates in the classic tabbed New dialog.

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 Building Blocks or create customized toolbars or macros or keyboard shortcuts, you can choose whether to store them in the Normal template 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).

Note: I am indebted to Office MVP Beth Melton for technical editing and many useful suggestions that improved the flow of this article. The many flaws that remain are entirely my own fault (and due to my ignoring her advice).