Jan's Working with Words

Some of Word's templates are complete documents themselves. They serve as an example of good writing style and good layout style. You would naturally replace the pre-written text with words of your own. When you don't quite know how to get started, such a document will get you moving.

Clean up dummy text!
Be sure to remove all the pre-written parts of a template document! It's so embarrassing to send out something that includes phrases like [Click here to type your letter] or [Insert photo here].

Document Template

A document template sets the themes for fonts, colors, and effects just like a document theme does. But, it also includes a style set for paragraph styles and can include much more.

Templates are grouped in categories like Letter, Report, and Certificate. A few are installed with Office. Many more are available online from Microsoft. In fact, most of the thumbnails that you see in the New dialog are for templates that will have to download for you to use them.

Examples of Templates in Recent templates section

Examples of Document Templates:

• Graphics: The #1 Karate Student Award template is made up of nearly all graphical elements.
   

• Sample Text - an actual document: The 'Research paper in MLA style' has no graphics at all but does include an actual report as sample text. This clearly shows the proper layout. The 'Complaint about poor hotel service' template includes an actual letter to guide your writing. Very helpful... when you remember to replace that text!
   

• Explanation Text: The Oriel Report template and the School report (Butterfly design) show their features using both dummy text and explanations of what to put where like [Type document subtitle here]. The dummy text is from the function =rand() which puts in paragraphs about working with Word.
  

  The template thumbnail shows one page. The initial document for these two templates actually has more pages. Surprise!

  

  The author of the template must create a thumbnail to show. Some thumbnails show the first page. Others show an interior page. It's the author's choice.

  Wrong version: A template may have been written for a different version of Word than you are using. It can still work but specific directions in the explanation text may not work for your version. Be careful about following directions.

  Errors: Some templates may contain errors. Some are submitted by users instead of being created by Microsoft employees. In either case, there can be errors. For example, the Oriel Report above mentions a 'Write' tab (in the orange text between big orange parentheses). That should be the 'Home' tab. No version of Word has had a tab named Write.

Using a Template

• New Document from template:
  You must choose a template when you create a new document, even if it is just the Blank Document template.

  Office button or File tab > New > Choose a category > Click on a thumbnail > Click on the Download or Create button under the preview.

  The button under the preview on the right will show Createif the template is already in your Templates folder on your computer. It shows Download if the template is online.

• Existing document - changing the template:
  It's not obvious how to go about assigning a different template to your document later. If you manage to do it, you still will not see the design elements, graphics, or the template's included text. That may be OK if you did not want those design elements anyway. It won't help at all if you use a certificate template. Those are mostly graphics! The document's styles are NOT automatically updated to use the new template's styles unless you tell it to do so.

  You will not be applying a different template to an existing document in these lessons, but the Appendix includes a page on how to do that.

Where are the templates?

Microsoft decided to use different locations for templates depending on the version of Office and on where the template came from. If you upgraded from an older version of Office, you may still have the old templates in their old locations.

• Templates installed with Office
    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates 
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033
    C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\Templates\1033
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office 15\root\Templates\1033
• Downloaded Templates
   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates  
• Custom/Personal Templates
    C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates  
    C:\Users\<username>\Documents\Custom Office Templates