This article was adapted from Microsoft Office Word 2003 Inside Out by Mary Millhollon and Katherine Murray. Visit Microsoft Learning to buy this book.

Computers are powerful, but they still need to be told what to do — no matter how automated a task might seem. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that whenever you create a new document in Word, your document is based on a template that provides default document creation settings. Templates are available locally on your computer as well as online, and they serve as patterns for documents: They define styles, AutoText entries, toolbars, standard (or boilerplate) text, placeholder text, and so forth.

You can control how documents and templates interact in a number of ways. For example, you can base documents on existing templates, create custom templates for new and existing documents, attach templates to documents, load global templates, and edit templates.

Templates defined

A template is a .dot file (or group of related files) that contains the structure and tools for shaping the style and page layout of finished files. Templates can contain settings for fonts, styles, page layout parameters, toolbars, macros, AutoText entries, key assignments, menus, headers, footers, and special formatting. By default, Word bases new blank documents on the Normal template.

The main purpose of templates is to make formatting and inserting information into documents as efficient, error-free, and automatic as possible. The fewer formatting and typing tasks you have to perform, the better. In addition to speeding document creation, templates enable you to provide custom editing environments for particular projects and clients because templates can include interface tools (such as toolbars, macros, and menus) as well as formatting and layout settings. To clarify, templates can assist in document creation tasks in the following ways:

• Provide all relevant styles for a particular document   You can create and use a series of styles to generate a particular look for a document. By creating a template that contains a set of styles, you can easily access and consistently apply the styles throughout similar and related documents.
• Include boilerplate text, AutoText entries, headers, footers, and placeholder text   Templates can save you from repeatedly typing information that recurs in related documents by enabling you to create new documents that automatically contain default text, include relevant custom AutoText entries (such as company names and contract text), and display placeholder text.
• Display necessary and customized toolbars and menus   If a particular type of document always uses specific Word tools, you can create a template that displays a Word interface that caters to the tasks associated with the document type.
• Include specialized macros for a particular document type   To help streamline tasks in certain types of documents, you can include macros in a template. Macros are routines that are created to perform a task or set of tasks, and are assigned to a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut.

Global templates and document templates

Regardless of the information included in templates, you can use two main types of templates when you work in Word: global templates and document templates.

Global templates (most notably the Normal template) contain settings that are available to all documents. In contrast, document templates, such as memo and Web page templates, contain settings that are available only to documents based on that template. When a document is based on a template, the template is attached to the document.

If both the Normal template and the document template that is attached to a document define styles that use the same name, the attached document template's settings override the Normal template settings. The reason document templates take precedence when it comes to styles is that the purpose of document templates is to apply formatting, while the Normal template is generally used to store default styles, macros, AutoText entries, and custom toolbar, menu, and keyboard shortcut settings that you can use while you work with any document, not just documents based on a particular document template. By design, templates should be used as global templates when they contain features that benefit any open document.