Modifying Your Templates

No matter how carefully you originally design your templates, you will sooner or later want to make some improvements.

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 the C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder or one of its subfolders and double-click the template that you want to revise .

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. This is not always necessary, however. 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.

When you close a document that is based on any template other than Normal, Word first asks whether you want to save changes to the document (if you have unsaved changes). If you have added, modified, or deleted any of the four items you can store in templates, Word then asks whether you want to save changes to the template. Click the Yes button to retain the changes.