Basing One Style on Another

Personalizing Word's Templates

If you have tried one of the templates that comes with Word and like the look of the finished document, it's probably worth taking a few minutes to make the template your own. Wherever possible, you can replace the Click Here and Type placeholder text with your personal information. For example, if you're revising a letter template, you might fill in your own return address, company name , and signature block. You can also remove any text you don't need, and modify the formatting if desired.

After you've made these changes, creating letters based on the template will be a snap because you will need to fill in only the text that changes from one letter to the next .

To personalize one of Word's templates, you create a new template based on Word's template and then modify it, as described in these steps:

1. Choose File, New to display the New dialog box.

2. Click the tab that contains the template you want to modify, and click the template. Under Create New in the lower-right corner of the dialog box, mark the Template option button. This tells Word to start a new template (not a document) based on the selected template (see Figure 7.7). Then click the OK button.

   Figure 7.7. Word will create a new template based on the Contemporary Fax template.

   

3. Word creates a new template based on the one you selected in the New dialog box. (Notice that the temporary name in the title bar begins with Template , not Document. ) Fill in all the Click Here and Type prompts that should contain your own information, and leave the ones that you will need to change each time you use the template (see Figure 7.8).

   Figure 7.8. The return address and sender have been filled in.

   

4. Delete or revise text in the template as needed, and make any changes to the formatting that you like.

5. Click the Save button in the Standard toolbar to display the Save As dialog box.

6. Because you're saving a template, Word automatically selects the Templates folder in the Save In list. (This folder is a subfolder of C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft.) If you save the template in the Templates folder itself, it appears in the General tab of the New dialog box. If this is what you want, skip to step 8.

7. If you want your template to appear in one of the other existing tabs in the New dialog box, create a subfolder of that name under the Templates folder. For example, to make your template appear in the Memos tab, create a Memos subfolder. If your template doesn't belong in any of the existing tabs, you can create a new one. Create a subfolder of the Templates folder with the name that you want to appear on the tab. A tab corresponding to this subfolder appears in the New dialog box the next time you display it. When you've created your subfolder, double-click it.

8. Type a name for the template in the File Name text box, and click the Save button.

Documents have an extension of .doc, and templates have an extension of .dot. (If you don't see file extensions on your computer and you want to, double-click the My Computer icon on your desktop, choose View, Folder Options, click the View tab, clear the Hide File Extensions for Known File Types check box, and then click OK.)

Your new template now appears in the General tab of the New dialog box, or in another tab if you saved it in a subfolder of the Templates folder. Try using the template to see whether it works as you want it to.

An alternative method of personalizing one of Word's templates is to start a new document based on the template and personalize the document. Then choose File, Save As, and specify Document Template in the Save As Type list in the Save As dialog box. Word automatically displays the Templates folder in the Save In list. Save the template in the Templates folder or in a subfolder of this folder.