Using Templates in Microsoft Word
When using Microsoft Word, most people just open up a blank document and begin typing away. In lots of cases, like in writing up a term paper or making a grocery list, this can be perfectly adequate. However, when attempting to create more complex documents, such as a newsletter or a resume, templates can be quite handy in both saving you a good deal of time and making your final product look professional. Even better, they are very simple to use. Here is a quick crash course in getting started with using templates in Word.
Choosing a template
Templates are easily accessed by clicking ‘New’ in the ‘File’ menu. A grid will come up showing a variety of categories from budgets and flyers to newsletters and reports. A single click on a category will open a page that gives you a plentiful selection of template styles. Clicking on one of the styles will quickly download the template from Microsoft and open up a new document that’s ready to be customized!
Adding your content
Your fresh template will be filled with content placeholders that you simply need to go through and replace with your own information. At this point, it’s useful to recognize that, despite how useful templates are and how professional they look, there’s nothing special about them in the sense that they are not made of anything that you couldn’t do yourself in Word from scratch. That is, everything within them can be created without the use of the template (see below for tips on how to create your own templates). In thinking about templates this way, it’s easy to see how you can interact with them: the same way you would with anything else in Word. You can even imagine a template as a complete file a friend sent you that you’re just editing for spelling mistakes and changing the color scheme around. There two main elements of templates that you’ll be interacting with the most: text and pictures.
Interacting with text
The premade templates that are accessible through the ‘File’ menu in Word all contain text placeholders. These can either be in the form of standard text (i.e., if you were to just start typing in a blank document in Word) or text boxes. Both types of text can be modified in the ways that you are used to by highlighting text and using the menus, such as changing font, the font color, paragraph orientation, and so on. Where the text box differs is that a.) it can be dragged wherever you’d like and b.) its size can be adjusted. Text is strictly restricted to within the box and the size of the box can be resized however you’d like by clicking and dragging one the anchor points that appears when you click on a text box. It can be useful to think of text boxes as residing in a layer above the rest of the document and, indeed, they can be set on top of pictures or even other text boxes. After a text box is selected, right-clicking will bring up a menu that gives you several options, including ‘Format Text Box,’ which, among other things, allows you to add outlines and backgrounds to the text box.
Interacting with pictures
Pictures behave in essentially the same manner as text boxes and can be dragged and resized to your liking. Of course, you’ll probably want to replace the picture placeholders with a relevant picture. To do this, simply click on the picture placeholder and click the ‘Insert’ menu button at the top of the screen. Choosing ‘Picture’ will open up a browsing dialog box for you so specify the path to the picture you’d like to include. After you select your file, the picture will replace the placeholder and remain the same size of frame as the placeholder. Alternatively, you can click on the picture to select it and press the ‘Delete’ key on your keyboard.
Creating your own template
Now that you’re familiar with how to interact with and customize a premade template, it’s useful to realize that you can create templates of your own—either for personal use or for others. Creating your own template is actually rather simple: After you have all of the elements of the template organized how you want them, simple go to ‘Save As’ in the ‘File’ menu and select either ‘Word Template (*dotx)’ or ‘Word 97-2003 Template (*dot),’ depending on the version of Word you are developing the template to be used for. If you’re developing the template for a wide audience (e.g., to distribute to a class of students) you may want to save as a Word 97-2003 template.
Additional resources
Official tutorial Official templates Links to unofficial templates Working with images in Word