When to create a template

There are several ways to create a new document in Word:

•  Click New on the Standard toolbar (Word 2003 and earlier) or select Blank Document in the New Document dialog in Word 2007. Alternatively, press Ctrl+N. This will create a new Blank Document based on the Normal template, which contains all the styles available in Word. You can modify these styles as desired, and you can change the layout of the document in any way you wish.

Note: By default the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) in Word 2007 does not have a New button that automatically creates a new document based on the Normal template. To add the New button, click the arrow (More button) at the end of the QAT and then click New.

• Open an existing document as the basis for a new one. The natural tendency of most users of word processing applications is to create a document and use it as a model for future documents. That is, you format a letter the way you want all (or most) of your letters to look, save it, and then, when you want to write a letter, open this document and save it under another name as the starting point for your letter. While this technique is a practical approach in some instances, there is always a risk that you will forget to use Save As and will instead overwrite your original document.
• Create a new document using an existing document as a quasi-template. This is a way to reuse a document without risk because a document created this way is unnamed; the first time you click the Save button or press Ctrl+S, you will get the Save As dialog, which requires you to name the document and choose a place to save it.
• Word 2002 and 2003: In the New Document task pane, choose New | From existing document… Browse for the document in the New from Existing Document dialog and click on Create New.
• Word 2007: New from existing… is one of the options in the New Document dialog. Browse for the document in the New from Existing Document dialog and click on Create New.
• You can actually accomplish the same thing in any version of Word by right-clicking on a document file in the Open dialog or Windows Explorer/My Computer and choosing New.
• Create a new document based on a different template, either one of those that ship with Word (Installed Templates) or one you have created, by selecting it in the New, Templates, or New Document dialog.

The whole point of a Word template is to create a format that can be used over and over again. Accordingly, it is unnecessary and a waste of time to create a template for a single-use document. Creating a template for letters makes sense; creating a template for a letter protesting one’s unfair dismissal does not. A template for flyers for AA – Al-Anon events may make sense if the events are frequent and the flyers should be consistent in design; if the event is a one-off, a document will suffice.

So, before you set out to create a template, you should ask yourself whether it is something you would use repeatedly. Often this realization comes after you’ve recreated the same document format numerous times, changing margins, modifying styles, changing fonts. It occurs to you that you could save time in the creation of such documents if you didn’t have to make all these changes. That’s when you need a template.

In addition, there are advantages to true templates that cannot be achieved with documents used as templates. Although it is now possible to save macros, a customized QAT (toolbars and  menus in earlier versions), and keyboard shortcuts in documents, Building Blocks (AutoText entries in earlier versions) must still be saved in templates. And the New/Templates/New Document dialog actually makes it easier to access templates than to search for documents.

If you create a specific kind of document (such as letters) almost exclusively, your first impulse may be to just make the necessary changes to the Normal template, so that you get a document formatted the way you want when you click the New button. This can be a solution up to a point, but please note the caveats expressed in “How to change the default settings for Word documents.” In particular, it is not a good idea to add a header or footer to the Normal template because this will affect the layout of labels.

For this reason it is usually a good idea to leave the Normal template alone (a lot of your settings, such as shortcut key assignments and—in previous versions—custom toolbars, will be stored there anyway, so that they are available to all templates) and make a custom template for each specific task you routinely do.