Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

Creating a New Template

Now that you've learned what templates are and how to use the ones Word provides, it's time to start creating your own. Word gives you two ways to do so: from scratch, or by saving an existing document file as a template. Answer the following questions to decide which approach makes more sense:

• Do you already have a document that can easily be transformed into a template? For example, if you're creating a template for business proposals, have you made a proposal lately with which you're especially pleased? Would it be easy to edit the contents specific to one client or project, leaving “holes” for you to fill in custom information later? If the answers to these questions are yes, it makes sense to open that file, make ...