Create template
A template is a repository for things you want to use frequently andfor complex things that you want to do only once. In normal use, thismeans Layouts, Styles, Tool Bars, AutoText Entries and Macros.
This article tells you how to create a template to produce a software manual. That's because:
- That is what I do for a living so I will know what I am talking about (sort of…);
- Such a template contains all the things you will need to produce any other kind of document;
- I happen to have one lying around here that I can give you to download;
- It's the template I used to produce this document, so you can download an example as well.
Mine is set up for metric A4 paper. If you change the paper size, you will have to change everything (and I mean“everything”) else as well. Sorry about that.
I am going to give all dimensions in metric units (except fontsizes!). You may want to change your settings to metric now. That wayyou can use the dimensions I specify. At the end, you can change backto Imperial if you wish, and Word will convert everything into thatmeasure for you. To do this got to Tools>Options>General and set “MeasurementUnits” to Centimetres.
Technical writers love to specify commands and dialog boxes veryprecisely; and even show you a screen shot of the dialog box. I can'tdo that here because I am writing to cover nine versions of Word. Thiswas actually written on a beta version of Word 2004. If you work withme, you will find everything I mention in Word 6, Word 95, Word 97,Word 98, Word 2000, Word X, Word XP (Word 2002), Word 2003 and Word2004. You may have to look for some things: things move around in theuser interface from version to version.
I guess we should recognise that according to Microsoft's research, “normal”users do not use or even know about templates. When Word comes out ofthe box, it is set up to cater for users who do not understand wordprocessing.
Word is set up to enable the simplest fastest way to produce adocument if you have no idea of what you want or what you are doing. Ifyou were in that state, you wouldn't be reading this. So this articleassumes you are in a workplace, where you adhere to a Style Guide and aFormatting Specification. A Template is the repository that stores allthe specifications and choices that implement your Style Guide andFormatting Specification.
It's also the place where you put all the things you use that arefiddly to create or required to conform exactly to specification.
Always change formatting with Format>Style.I may sometimes forget to say so, in which case please remember it forme! There is only one time in this whole exercise that you can applydirect formatting. Anywhere else, it's a total waste of time: remember:for most users, the only thing they can ever access in a template isthe styles. If the settings are not in the styles, they're pointless.
By the end of this exercise, you will realise that Word's defaultsettings are all designed for the knee-cap-level user, and that we haveto spend a lot of time undoing them. {Begin Political Rant} I herebygive you permission to think unkindly of the Product MarketingDepartment, which took the world's finest word processor and ruined itin order to reinforce the misconceptions of people who should not beleft unsupervised with a pencil!!! {end politicalrant}.
So: start Word, allow the default blank document to load, and choose File>SaveAs. Change the “Save asType” box to “Document Template(.dot)”.
This is where Microsoft gives new users their first hint that they'regetting in too deep. As soon as you change the Type to Template, youare dumped into your User Templatesfolder (although you can then change the path if you want to). Thereare good reasons for this. The first is that Word needs to know wherethis thing is so it can offer it to you when you need it; the second isthat in this location word can take extra care that macro viruses donot try to add anything nasty to it.
At the moment, the document is still a copy of your Normal.dottemplate. Give it a file name and save it. Make the file name long anddescriptive. It doesn't matter that it is long: you will never have totype it. You will do yourself a favour if you follow some kind ofnaming convention. I suggest“ A4Manual.dot”Adding your company name is really nice when you come to deal with alot of templates. Specifying the paper size is goodness too: you arelikely to end up with a series of templates for different paper sizes:it's nice to keep them together. You do not have to type the“.dot” bit: Word will add it for you.
Sofar, it appears that nothing has changed: you still appear to belooking at a copy of your Normal.dot (and you are). Behind the scenes,Word has made some critically important changes: the file now has adifferent internal structure, and it has gained extra objects to storethings that documents cannot (or should not) contain.
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