iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Chapter 25. Creating Custom Numbers Templates

What’s that, you don’t feel so good? You’ve got a pain in your spreadsheet? Describe the symptoms: Constant reformatting of table colors and text styles; tedious application of the same familiar formulas; acute boredom with rebuilding the same handful of tables over and over again; accompanied by a throbbing ache at the temples. Friend, I’m afraid you’ve got a severe case of time fritteritis, a condition marked by terrible wastes of attention and mental energy. Happily, the treatment is painless, quickly applied, and features a 100-percent recovery rate: You need a custom template—possibly several.

Custom templates don’t have to be complicated for you to feel their soothing effects immediately. Even creating your own custom blank template—an empty sheet—can be a huge timesaver when you prestock it with your preferred table styles, favorite object settings, and a savvy selection of reusable tables. Having your very own plain-vanilla starter document in the Template Chooser means you’ll no longer have to change colors and text styles every time you add a new table or create a new document.

Templates become even more obviously useful when you have forms that you or others fill out all the time: time sheets, invoices, expense reports, worksheets for calculating the odds of acquiring superpowers from ambient gamma rays—you know, the everyday stuff. When you have these go-to documents available in the Template Chooser, you’ve always got a fresh ...