Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

Building the Skeleton of Your Form

Whether you ultimately want your forms to be used as hard copy or online, the first step is the same: creating a template containing the "shell" of the form. The shell is the text, layout, and formatting elements that remain constant whenever the form is used. To create a template from scratch, choose File, New, click Template in the Create New area of the dialog box, and click OK.

Note

If you originally created a printed form in Word, and you now want to turn it into an electronic form that can be filled out from within Word, open the original Word file and resave it as a template.

After you create your template (or save an existing document as a template), you can use all Word's editing, formatting, and drawing ...