Word 2000 in a Nutshell

Chapter 14. Creating a Template

As you learned in Chapter 2, all Word documents are based on templates, .dot files that contain styles, macros, customizations, and often boilerplate text. In Word, we say that a template is attached to a document.

Check out Chapter 2 for all the gory details on how Word handles templates. Here’s a brief recap, though. Some templates are loaded globally during the Word startup process. The items in these templates (styles, etc.) are available in all documents opened in Word. Word’s own normal.dot is the master global template and is loaded every time Word starts. Other global templates can be loaded automatically or manually, and unloaded at will using the Tools → Templates and Add-Ins command.

Every Word document is created using a template and, afterward, that template remains attached to the document unless you attach another one, again using the Templates and Add-Ins command. When a template is first attached to a document (either during the document’s creation or later), all of the styles, macros, toolbars, etc. are copied to that document. After this, the document pretty much stands on its own and you can add new components to it without affecting the template. Similarly, modifying the template does not affect the document further, by default. Word does provide ways to alter this behavior so that documents and templates continues to affect each other, but once more, I’m going to refer you to Chapter 2 for details.

In this chapter, I walk you ...