Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 31. Templates and Themes

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Templates versus themes

• User templates

• Installed templates

• Online templates

• Modifying templates

• Themes

• Theme components

• Saving custom themes

Templates have already been mentioned over 150 times in this book, so it's probably about time that we look at them a bit more closely. Themes have also been mentioned a few times in this book, but not nearly as often. Even so, both are important elements when it comes to creating, formatting, and maintaining word documents.

At the outset, the relationship between templates and themes needs to be made clear. One way to think about templates and themes is as different layers of formatting, along with the style set, which was discussed in Chapter 9. When you create or open a document, you start with the formatting that's assigned via styles in the underlying template. The default document template in Word is Normal.dotm. Its default theme is Office, and its default style set is Default. That's Normal Office Default. NOD, if you understand.

When you create a new Word document, you start off with the defaults assigned to the underlying template. You can then layer on top of those defaults changes in style set as well as changes in theme. Applying a new theme or style set doesn't change the underlying template. It merely changes certain aspects of the formatting, enabling you to quickly change the overall look of a document.

What Are Templates?

It's possible to use Word without ever stopping to consider the question ...