Last week we used Microsoft Word's Style Gallery to understand one of the main reasons for using templates: to change the formatting of all of the styles in a document. You can read last week's newsletter here:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1704442036
Why would you want to change the formatting of all of the styles in a document? Let me suggest some reasons:
1. You're sick of editing in Garamond Ugly, which is the typeface your client has used. Why not (a) save your client's document as a template and then (b) go back to the original document and attach your own template that defines the styles in a typeface you like? When you're finished editing, you can simply attach the "client" template that you saved, which will restore your client's formatting in all of its hideous glory. For suggestions of typefaces that work well for editing, see our June 6, 2000, newsletter:
http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?sort=d&mid=1700934923
2. You've finished editing and you want to apply the final format to a document that's otherwise ready for printing. In the past you've saved certain elegantly designed documents as templates, so now you can attach one of those templates to your current document and create an instant masterpiece.
3. As the editor of an academic journal, you're pulling together a dozen papers from various scholars and want to give all the papers the same format. You attach your standard template, and voil?!
Note that for these scenarios to work, the documents in question must use styles that are also used in the templates you're going to attach. For example, if your document includes certain paragraphs formatted with the Heading 1 style, when you apply a *template* that uses the Heading 1 style, the formatting from the template will be copied to the headings in your document.
That is, it will if you've turned on the option to automatically update document styles. Here's the whole procedure:
1. Open the document to which you want to attach a template.
2. Click the "Tools" menu. (In Word 6 or 7, click the "File" menu instead.)
3. Click "Templates and Add-ins."
4. Click the "Attach" button.
5. Click the name of the template you want to attach.
6. Click the oddly-named "Open" button. (You'll now see the name and path of the template in the "Document template" box.)
7. Put a check in the box labeled "Automatically update document styles."
8. Click the "OK" button to attach the template to the current document and update the styles to match the formatting in the template.
I still haven't said why you should attach a template rather than use Word's Style Gallery to change your styles' formatting. Actually, the Style Gallery works just fine for that purpose. But attaching a template does more than just change the formatting of styles. It also makes certain items available in the document to which it is attached. Those items include AutoText entries, macros, and customized toolbars, menus, and key combinations--some very useful stuff! But that's a topic for another time.
