You can create templates to standardize the various types of documents your students produce: research papers, book reports, and so on. Or, have student teams produce document templates and justify their design. Use templates for consistency in your classroom and across your department. You can also explore the templates that come with Word 2000. Templates are powerful tools that save time and decrease the number of mistakes in documents. They give a uniform look and feel to the various types of documents you create.

Every Microsoft Word document is based on a template. A template determines the basic structure for a document and contains document settings such as AutoText entries, fonts, key assignments, macros, menus, page layout, special formatting, and styles.

The two basic types of templates are global templates and document templates. Global templates, including the Normal template, contain settings that are available to all documents. Document templates, such as the memo or fax templates in the New dialog box, contain settings that are available only to documents based on that template. For example, if you create a memo using the memo template, the memo can use the settings from both the memo template as well as the settings in any global template. Word 2000 provides a variety of document templates and you can create your own document templates.

The value of a Word 2000 template is simple: it can be used over and over to produce variations of a particular look, but without changing the original itself (unless, of course, you want or need to change it). There are two ways of creating a template: you can start a new document, indicating that it is to be a template; or you can save a document as a template.

TO CREATE A TEMPLATE

1. On the File menu, click New.

2. Click the General tab and then click Blank Document.

3. Under Create New in the lower-right corner, click Template.

4. Click OK.

5. Create and format the document as you normally would including styles, headers, footers, tables, and so forth.

6. From the File menu, click Save As, and in the File Name box, type a name for your template. In the Save As Type list, select Document Template.

7. The Templates folder appears in the Save In box. Save the new template in the Templates folder so it can be easily retrieved and used to create other documents based on its characteristics.

8. Click Save.

9. To use the template, on the File menu, click New. You will see different tabs with different names containing the various templates that came with Word 2000. The template you just created should be on the General tab.

10. Click the name of the template and then click OK. You have now created a new file based on your test template, but the template itself has not been opened or changed in any way. Since this is a new document, even though it's based on an existing template, you need to give it a new name.

11. From the File menu, click Save As.

12. In the File Name box, type the name of the document and then click Save.