Help with Header and Footer in Templates

[cheryl]

I have created a template that contains "boilerplate" information in
the header and footer. I would like to be able to apply this template
to existing documents. When I attach the template to existing
documents, it takes the text styles and margins, but it doesn't take
the header and footer info. Am I out of luck or am I just doing
something wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Cheryl

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi, Cheryl,

That's just the way templates work. If you use File > New to base a new
document on a template, then the document will inherit whatever text is in
the template. After the document already exists, though, there isn't any
mechanism (other than ordinary copy/paste) to get the text from the template
into the document.

A slightly less time-consuming option is to create AutoText entries in the
template to contain the boilerplate texts. Then, when the template is
attached to an existing document, you can go into the header or footer, type
the name of the AutoText entry, and press F3 to bring in the boilerplate.

 

[cheryl]

Thanks for the info, Jay.

To recap, once a document exists, there's no way I can attach a new
template to it and have it accept the header and footer info from the
new template? (I just want to be clear on this)

My dilemma is this: I have about 600 existing documents that need to
be reworked into a new template that contains not only new styles and
margins, but also graphics in the header and footer. I was hoping I
could accomplish this task through attaching the new template, but it
sounds like I'm out of luck, huh?

Oddly enough, I started on my task yesterday, and the only thing that
seemed to be working at all were the styles. The margins weren't even
being reset when I attached the new template. I can't help but think
I'm doing something wrong.

Thanks for your assistance. I truly appreciate it.
Cheryl

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Cheryl

That's right - all the page layout information (including margins) is stored
in the template but can't be written back to newly attached documents - only
the styles can be updated.

You've two options. You can create new 'shell' documents and paste the
content of the old document into place - if you do this, make sure you have
typed something in the new document before you start, as otherwise the
inserted document may bring its page format with it. Note also that you must
avoid pasting any section breaks - they also store page layout information.

Alternatively, you could record a macro in the new template of opening and
accepting the page layout dialog, and set up some AutoText entry copies of
the header and footers. Attach the template as you are doing at the moment,
but then run the macro, and update the headers and footers using the
AutoText (note that you can't replace the final paragraph in Header or
Footer style).

If you want to get into VBA you could automate some more, but its probably
not worth putting in an enormous development effort for a one-off
conversion, even for 600 docs.

 

[cheryl]

Margaret,

Thanks for confirming what I thought must be true. I guess I have a
lot of work ahead of me!

Cheryl