Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Changing Document Formats Globally

When Word creates a new document, it copies the entire contents of the template to the new document—text, pictures, headers and footers, and so on—and then establishes a link between the document and template (so, for example, styles in the template become available in the document). With one possible exception, after a document is created, nothing from the template gets copied into the document. So, for example, if you change the Normal template so its default font is Garamond 11 point, all new blank documents will have Garamond 11 point—but all old documents based on the Normal template will stay just as they are.

Tip from

There's one huge exception to this rule: If you choose Tools, Templates and Add-Ins, ...