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Subject:RE: templates vs. documents with MS Word From:"Jonathan West" <jwest -at- mvps -dot- org> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:08:14 +0100
>
> So, do you all think that using a template for multiple editors of a
> document is less of a hassle, or more of a hassle?
It is absolutely essential IMO!
>
> I create templates (not in the MS Word definition but as common usage)
> for my company and in retrospect, am now wondering why I should bother
> to save them as Word templates and create new documents from that Word
> template. Many people are not going to bother to make sure the Word
> template is on their own machines and we do not have any sort of master
> document setup (although we do use Sharepoint).
OK, if you are going to do this you have to be systematic about it. If you
have multiple authors and you ultimately have to bring together many
chapters by different people into a single document, then you life is made
infinitely easier if they are all basing their documents on the same
templates and ALL USING THE SAME STYLES.
Doing this makes it much, much quicker to copy & paste between documents to
assemble a combined document.
>
> So far templates have just offered myself the opportunity to confuse my
> own documents and so now I am considering just saving the document with
> all it's styles and layout, etc., and then locking they styles so no
> one else can edit the styles; while keeping a local backup document
> (with those styles of course); and letting them all edit the document
> that way.
Then you are being insufficiently systematic about it.
The key to getting yourself and everyone else using the templates and the
same styles is to make it so easy for people to do so that they prefer to do
it right than to do it wrong. Training helps, but it is also important to
make the styles you want used extremely visible. This article will give you
tips on how to achieve that
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