 | Templates are special types of Word documents. They can contain styles, formatting, perhaps a header or footer, plus even some text. They're created just like documents but are saved to disk in a unique way. That's because you never really use the template itself, but rather a copy. By using that copy, you can create an entirely new document; the template merely helps you get started by doing some of the routine things for you. |
Documents have templates like people have last names. Mostly, the documents are born with their templates. You either choose the template when the document is first created or just create a new document, in which case the NORMAL.DOTM template is used. You can change that by assigning or attaching a new template to a document.
Here's how you apply a template to a document:
1. Open the document that needs a new template attached.
2. From the Office Button menu, choose the Word Options command.
3. Choose Add-Ins from the left side of the Word Options dialog box.
4. On the right side of the window, near the bottom, choose Templates from the Manage drop-down list.
5. Click the Go button.
The Templates and Add-ins dialog box appears. You see which template is currently attached to the document, such as Normal.
6. Click the Attach button.
Word displays the Attach Template dialog box, which looks and works like the Open dialog box. Normally, this dialog box opens in the Templates folder, where you've probably stored a host of templates.
7. Select the template you want to attach.
8. Click the Open button.
The template is now attached, but you may need to do one more thing back in the Templates and Add-ins dialog box.
9. Optionally, select Automatically Update Document Styles.
Updating the styles means that your document's current styles are changed to reflect those of the new template, which is probably what you want. If not, skip this step.
10. Click OK.
The styles (and toolbars and macros) stored in that template are now available to your document, and the document is now attached to the template.
 | Note that attaching a template doesn't merge any text or graphics stored in that template. Only the styles (and toolbar and macros) are merged into your document. |
You can also use these steps to unattach a template. Do that by selecting NORMAL.DOTM as the template to attach.
- The template that's attached to a document may be just a name or a pathname indicating the location and name of a template document on disk.
- Any time you change or update a template, the changes are reflected in any document created by or attached to that template.
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