Applying Templates

[RPMitchal]

Word 2003

It was my thought or understanding that one could apply a template to a
document which would reflect, among other things, the established page layout
of the template; including margins; headers and footers; graphics and styles.


In applying templates to new documents I do indeed get the "styles" that are
inherent in the template, however, the document is not reflective of the
header content or margins. Am I expecting more than I should in this regard?


Upon reading Shauna Kelly's article on the subject, I was under the
impression that I could expect the following when applying a template to an
existing document

•styles
•content (eg text, pictures, a fax header, a form to fill in, the outline of
your monthly management report, any content in headers and footers)
•page settings (eg margins, paper size, paper orientation, settings for
headers and footers).

Conversely, if I were to open the template as a new document and import the
text from an existing document into the template it works fine. However,
that means renaming each document in a rather lengthy series of documents.

I would be most appreciative of any insight offered into this situation.

Thanks - RPM

 

[Jay Freedman]

Word 2003

It was my thought or understanding that one could apply a template to a
document which would reflect, among other things, the established page layout
of the template; including margins; headers and footers; graphics and styles.


In applying templates to new documents I do indeed get the "styles" that are
inherent in the template, however, the document is not reflective of the
header content or margins. Am I expecting more than I should in this regard?


Upon reading Shauna Kelly's article on the subject, I was under the
impression that I could expect the following when applying a template to an
existing document

•styles
•content (eg text, pictures, a fax header, a form to fill in, the outline of
your monthly management report, any content in headers and footers)
•page settings (eg margins, paper size, paper orientation, settings for
headers and footers).

Conversely, if I were to open the template as a new document and import the
text from an existing document into the template it works fine. However,
that means renaming each document in a rather lengthy series of documents.

I would be most appreciative of any insight offered into this situation.

Thanks - RPM

If you read http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/attachtemplate/index.html,
then you misunderstood completely with respect to the three bullet
items you cited. I hope Shauna won't mind me quoting the relevant bit
of her article:

"The document inherited styles, content and page settings from its
parent template when it was first created. You're not creating a new
document, so the styles, content and page settings in the
newly-attached template will not affect the document at all."

She then explains the considerable hoops you have to jump through to
transfer the attached template's settings to the document.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[RPMitchal]

Jay:

As always, I appreciate your response. And if as you say, I misunderstood
completely, then trust when I tell you that it most certainly is not the
first time. It seems to be happening to me quite a bit here lately. I've
been taking on some of the more advanced applications and techniques as apply
to Word - some of which "stick" and some of which do not. I will re-read the
article with the hopes of getting it right this time.

I would like to "piggy-back" another question here if you don't mind; and
that is...

"Does the possibility exist to apply a template to a series of documents
simultaneously or is that something that must be accomplished on a
document-by-document basis?"

My sincere appreciation to you and so many of the others for all that you do
with regard to this "Forum". You've all been a mental life-saver for me on
so many occasions; sometimes merely by reading through the questions and
answers posted by others on applications or situations that have yet to occur
for me.

RPM

 

[Jay Freedman]

There isn't anything built into Word that would let you attach a
template to multiple files. As in most such cases, though, it would be
possible to write a macro to do it. A macro that "does something" to
all the documents in a folder, for instance, is fairly common; for
example, http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/BatchFR.htm shows how
to run a Replace on multiple documents. That macro can be adapted to
set the AttachedTemplate value of each document to the specified
template.

Per our previous exchange, simply attaching a new template will make
the template's AutoText and macros available to the documents, but not
change the documents' appearance. Updating the documents' styles to
match those in the new template would take a bit of additional
programming. Changing anything in the documents' text,
headers/footers, margins, etc. would be a considerable job for a
knowledgeable programmer, mainly because of the number of possible
conflicts and errors that have to be avoided or handled.

Whether all this is worth doing depends on the balance of how much
programming is needed vs. how many documents have to be changed.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[RPMitchal]

Thanks much Jay.

I appreciate the link for the macro as well. As of the moment, I believe
that I will address each document individually.

However, at some point in time it is my plan to "attack" the VBA language
with an eye toward making sense of its features and the many helpful macros
that you and your compatriots have supplied to readers of the Forum - instead
of merely using them with no real understanding of how they work.

Goodness knows... I have read through several VBA books and have yet to find
the one that "clicks" for me. The syntax of using the more advanced macros
and the VBA code continues to escape me.

Should you or anyone else have any insight in that regard, I sure would
appreciate hearing about it.

In the meantime, thanks again for your help in this matter and all that has
come before.

RPM