Become a style guru Part 2: Templates
In Become a style guru Part 1, we mastered the basic elements of Microsoft Word styles and got well on the way to being a style guru. If you’re just joining in, you might like to get up to speed there.
In Part 1 we said that styles would make work easier, but do we really have to set up styles every time we start a document? Of course not. That would be like going shopping for an outfit every morning. That’s no way to start the day. Instead, you need a wardrobe stocked with smart and stylish clothes so you always have the right thing to wear. That’s what templates are, the wardrobes of Word. Create styles once in a template and they’re ready to be mixed and matched to suit the occasion. But, as we’ll see, that’s only the start of a template’s usefulness.
Presenting a unified font
But before we hit the shops, let me get on my soap box. Word is a really useful program because it puts the ability to write and publish information in everyone’s hands. But that’s also one of its great weaknesses.
Take Ian in the next cubicle. Ian’s a nice guy and his reports are really useful, but his taste in fonts... I’m not sure I’ll ever find paragraphs of 16-point Impact easy to read.
Most organisations have this problem. With 200 different report formats coming from 200 different employees, how are clients going to recognise your ‘brand’?
Corporate ‘writing’ standards
Usually managers solve this problem by issuing a writing standard. Now I’m all for a standard on writing, but it’s not the place for detailed formatting instructions. Writing standards should cover more important issues, like:
- what types of documents are used in your company;
- the information that is most appropriate in those documents;
- how to use language to communicate clearly.
Instead of wasting time on formatting, improve how your company communicates. Use templates to take care of the styling.
Building your wardrobe
A Word template is, in most respects, just like a normal Word document, just that when you open it, it opens as a new document with formatting and content already inserted. Actually when you open a new blank document in Word, you’re actually starting from the default Normal template which contains the basic format for each Word document. If you hate the formatting Word uses you can customise the Normal template to something you like better. But now we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
So why not just use a previous version?
You can of course use a normal word document as a starting point for new documents. Many people work this way, but it’s really not such a good idea. Hands up anyone who hasn’t lost a copy of last year’s report that they were going to use as a ‘template’ for the next year’s? I thought so.
Besides, in a long document, you’ve got to cut out all the old text before you start writing the new one. And hands up everyone who’s included stuff from last year’s report in the new one. Exactly.
And incidentally, if you just use a Word document that’s especially designed for starting documents, with all your formatting and content in place, that’s all that you need to make a template!
Your new wardrobe
So let’s get started. (As in Part 1, we’re talking Word 2003 on Windows XP here, but we’ll point out any significant differences with older versions or if you’re using a Macintosh.)
Choose New from Word’s File menu and you’re presented the New Document task pane appears. Under the Templates heading, click “On my computer...”, this opens the Templates dialog box.
Figure 1: Choose “On my computer...” in the task pane
Here you can choose between creating a document or a template. Click the “Template” radio button in the bottom left of the dialog box to create a new template and click the “OK” button.
Figure 2: Click the “Template” radio button in the bottom left of the dialog box
With our spanking new template open, we can edit it just like we would any other document. Set up all our styles, either our own, or match them to your company’s graphic standards. We gave you all the style clues in Part 1, so hop back there if you like.
So now you have your new template looking nice, why not go a step further? You can not only style the document, you can set out the document’s structure. Let’s say you’re setting up a template for annual reports. These reports always have an executive summary and an approvals list at the end of the document, so let’s put them in. We can add all the headings that have to appear in each annual report.
Now you can start to see templates’ real power. Not only will your documents look the same, but they’ll have the same structure. Believe it or not this can really make your business more efficient. For starters, it will make documents easier to write since writers won’t have to work out new structures each time. It will also make documents easier to read, because people will always know where to find the executive summary and the approvals list.
Dude, where’s my template?
Word also treats templates specially. By default it keeps them in a special templates folder. When you choose File > Save, Word will go straight to its default Templates folder.
To be even more organized, I’m going to create a folder inside the Templates folder called Alucida (where I’ll store all my templates for work) and save the new template as “Annual Report”. Word comes with a range of templates, which are stored in the other folders, so I’ll keep mine separate from them.
If you have your computer set to show file extensions, you will notice that Word gives the template a .dot file extension, rather than the usual .doc file extension.
If you don’t want to keep your templates where Word decides, you can choose your own location. Choose Tools > Options and select the “File Locations” tab.
Figure 3: Changing the User templates location in Word
The User templates location is where Word looks for and stores your personal templates. You can change this by clicking the “Modify” button and choosing a new folder.
However, if you’re working in an organisation, you can set up Workgroup templates, that everyone on a network can access. This means that everyone in the organisation will be able to use the same super-sharp templates.
Finally, I can end Ian’s 16-point Impact reign of terror.
Ready to wear
Now that my template is ready, it’s very simple to use. Selecting File > New, I get a choice of templates to use. If I choose the new Alucida tab, my Annual Report template is waiting there.
When I select that template and click OK, a new document opens with all the formatting and structure ready to go.
Figure 4: My new Annual report template is ready to go
Now you can see how useful templates are and why any organization worth its salt uses them. A writing standard can say something as simple as:
“All document authors will write documents using the templates provided.”
... and then set out how documents will be approved, who will be accountable and what should go in different types of documents.
You can create your own designer collection of templates for all your organisation’s documents, so everyone’s reports, procedures, forms or whatever will look great and work well.
Normalising
I mentioned earlier that every ‘blank’ document in Word is actually based on a template: Normal.dot. You'll notice that when you open a blank document, you can already choose basic styles such as Heading 1 and Heading 2 and that any text you start typing will be in the Normal style.
If you're not a fan of the default styles, you can easily change these styles and have every document looking great as soon as you start it—even if you want all your documents in 16-point Impact!
The first step is to make a copy of your Normal template (just in case things don't quite go according to plan). Choose File›Open and find the Normal.dot file inside your Templates folder. Open it then, without making any changes to it at all, choose File›Save As..., name the file Normal_backup.dot click the “Save” button. When doing this, be sure to rename your backup template and not just move a copy somewhere else. Word gets confused if you have more than one Normal.dot file around and it wont keep any of your styles. If you’re using macros, this can also cause Word some troubles.
Choose File›Open and find Normal.dot again. Style the template how you like it and save it. Now when you open a new blank document it will have your personal styles.
Automatic for the people
Once again, you have begun to explore an exciting new tool that can make your life easier and your organisation more efficient and more consistent. And once again, we’ve only scratched the surface. As you develop other Word skills you can create even more powerful templates.
For instance, the document I developed in this article uses fields in the header to show the number of pages, the date of writing and, most valuably, the title of the document. The title field means that if I change the title of the document, all my headers get updated automatically.
At Alucida we often build automated templates for our clients, so that when an author starts a new document they are prompted for information about the document that’s important to the company. That information then gets stored with the document and travels with it—even if it’s converted to PDF or converted to HTML using Web Spinner. With these sorts of tools the possibilities are almost limitless.
Figure 5: Automated templates give you even more power
Using styles and templates you’ve made it easy for people to write documents that are consistently formatted throughout your organisation.
Not only are your organisation’s documents the best dressed in town, you’ve saved yourself the work of styling every document you open. Now you can put more energy into what’s really important in writing a document—communicating with your readers.