August 2003

Using Templates in Microsoft Word

By Teresa Lightle- Technology Coordinator                                 Printable Version (pdf)

The beginning of another school year will soon begin. Butte County School's new and improved web page is up and running and staff have oodles of projects to complete in a very limited amount of time. Before you begin creating new documents, forms and announcements, check to see if a template has already been created that can help. Templates can save valuable time and decrease frustration in creating complex formats. MS Word has a limited number of Templates already installed with the program. To access these templates, Go to File in the menu bar, then select New. If you are using Office XP (2002), you will access the templates from the Task Pane by choosing General Templates. This will bring up the Templates Dialogue box.

The tabs across the top of this dialogue box address various categories of templates. A template is identified by the solid yellow top of the document icon, it also has the extension of .dot, instead of the standard Word extension of .doc. The icon with the "wand" are wizards, we will look at wizards in the September edition of Tech Tips. To launch a template, double click on the icon. This is an example of a memo template:

Follow instructions on the template to fill in necessary information. You may choose to delete or add any additional information you choose to a template.

Additional Templates are available online.

All versions of Office - Access online templates by going to Help in the menu bar, Choose Office on the Web.

Using Office XP Only- You can also access Online Templates through the task pane on the right side of the document screen, then choose Templates on Microsoft.com

The above options will launch the Microsoft web site. The first screen will ask you to identify the region. Choose United States. The next website will be the Microsoft Template Gallery.

Make sure to scroll through down the page. The lower section of the page divides the style of template by subjects.

Each of the above titles and subtitles are links to templates available online.
You may come to a site which will have you accept a user agreement. Choose I Agree. To select a template for use, click on the edit in button. This will open the document in the appropriate Office program. You can now edit the document, save it as a template, edit or print the file.

The E-Teacher

The E-Teacher will no longer appear as part of Tech Tips. A new deliver of teacher web sites will begin August 20th with the introduction of  Web Site Wednesday.  Each Wednesday teachers will be e-mailed links to new and exciting websites that will enhance teaching.

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For Questions or Comments about this newsletter please contact: tlightle@bcoe.org

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