Administrative Sparkle Blog

I don’t like to reinvent the wheel. Besides, it is time consuming and unnecessary. Take letters, reports, memos, legal documents, invoices, specifications, etc., any document that is used on a regular basis for your business, both internal and external. Your company should be using a standard look that represents the image they want to portray to their customers and the public. This is where templates come in. You want your documents to have a consistency that identifies the professionalism of your company.

Some people will take a report, memo, or letter that already exists and use that. This works, but there is that possibility that you will save over it and no longer have electronic documentation of the former document. If you are good about backing up your data, then you have no problem. However, in a large company, that is a hassle to request from IT to retrieve.

What a template will do is house the formatting specifications, any graphics (some companies use them on their letterhead without having to order stationery), and some of the standard language (such as used in memos). It will also prompt you to Save As, alleviating the possibility of saving over the document. There is no other choice.

To Create a Template

1. Create the document just as you would any other document.
2. Save As.
3. Save as type, select Word Template.
4. It will automatically go into a specified directory according to your Word Options. You can change the directory of your stored templates by making that change in your Word Options.

To Retrieve and Use a Template

1. In the menu bar, select New. In Microsoft Office Word 2007, I have an Office Button in the top left corner of the Word Program that takes me to printing, saving, and opening documents.
2. From this menu, you can select Blank Document and templates.

It’s that easy! You will love it once you get the hang of it. You will also find that you are preparing your documents much more quickly and easily than before. No more searching for the document you want to replicate, all your documents will retain consistency, and you will now be the forms and templates guru of your office.