Modifying Your Templates

No matter how carefully you originally design your templates, sooner or later you will want to make some improvements. Before you start, you will need to know where your templates are stored. To see where your user templates folder is located, choose Tools, Options, and click the File Locations tab. Double-click User Templates under File Types to display the Modify Location dialog box, and then display the Look In drop-down list to see the entire path to your user templates folder. (It is probably C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.) You can then click Cancel to close the Modify Location dialog box and then close the Options dialog box.

Follow these steps to make changes to a template:

1. Click the Open button in the Standard toolbar.

2. In the Files of Type list at the bottom of the Open dialog box, select Document Templates . Then navigate to your user templates folder. When you find the template you want to revise , double-click it.

   

   Remember to switch from Document Templates back to Word Documents or All Word Documents the next time you want to open a .doc file. Otherwise, you won't see your documents in the Open dialog box.

   
   

3. Revise your template as necessary.

4. Click the Save button in the Standard toolbar, and then close the template.

The preceding set of steps involves opening a template and making changes to it directly. These steps are necessary if you want to modify the text or formatting of the template. However, Word makes it simpler to save changes to your template that involve only adding, modifying, or deleting any of the four items you can store in templates (styles, toolbars , AutoText entries, and macros). When you close a document based on any template other than the Normal template after having made these types of changes, Word first asks whether you want to save changes to the document (if you have unsaved changes), and then it asks whether you want to save changes to the template. Click the Yes button to retain the changes.

In contrast, when you close a document based on the Normal template after you've added, modified, or deleted any of the items you can store in templates (styles, toolbars, AutoText entries, and macros), Word automatically saves these changes to the template.

If you want to be prompted to save changes to the Normal template, choose Tools, Options; click the Save tab; mark the Prompt to Save Normal Template button; and click OK.