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A few issues ago I whined about some of the default settings in Office XP and showed how to banish them from your life forever. Unfortunately, sometimes the changes you make in Word don't "stick." In other words, changes you make to settings often apply to the current document only. That's fine most of the time, but what if you want to make a change that affects every new document you open? For instance, you might prefer to use Arial as your default font.

The trick is to use a Word template--a boilerplate document that contains settings, formatting, and styles you need frequently for various tasks. When you base a new document on a template, you don't have to change the settings all over again. You can use templates not only to override defaults, but also to create custom documents that you use over and over again.

When you create a document with the file extension .dot and store it in the proper place, Word recognizes it as a template. When you click that file in the Task Pane, Word will know to create a new, blank document based on that template instead of opening the template file itself. As you can imagine, templates have a bazillion applications. You might create templates for letters, memos, legal documents, Web pages, faxes, marketing materials--virtually any kind of document that you use frequently and that you want to have a similar look and feel. For example, you might use a letterhead template for your company correspondence to make sure letters from your company have a standard look.

Word offers all kinds of templates to use as a basis for your own documents. To see Word's templates, choose File, New to open the Task Pane with the New Document pane open. Under the "New from template" section, click General Templates. You'll find templates for publications, reports, Web pages, letters, faxes, and many other types of documents. To use any of these, simply click one and follow the directions, replacing the boilerplate text with your own.

Even blank documents are based on a Word template. Normal.dot is the basis for each new document you create when you click the New Document icon, choose File, New, or click the Blank Document icon in the Task Pane. If there's a setting you'd like to change for all of your documents--for example, the default font or point size--Normal.dot is the file to edit. Your changes will apply to every document you create. If you don't want to make global changes, however, you're better off creating a new template, then opening files from that. Either way is a piece of cake.

Why Be Normal?

To see how editing Normal.dot works, let's change the default font to Arial. First, you'll have to find Normal.dot on your system. Where it's located depends upon your Windows configuration. Mine's in the C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates directory. If that's not where yours is located and you can't find it, go to the Windows task bar and choose Start, Search, For Files or Folders, and type Normal.dot in the "Search for files or folders named" text box. In Windows 98 and earlier, choose Find, Files and Folders, then type Normal.dot in the Named field. When Windows displays the file, right-click its icon and choose Open. If you simply double-click, Windows opens a blank document based on the template instead of the .dot file itself.

That's the hard part. Now just make the changes you want to appear in all new documents. To change the default font to Arial, simply choose it in the font drop-down list, then save the document and close it. Now all new documents you create will include the changes you made to Normal.dot.

Creating a New Template

If you don't want all of your new documents to default to Arial, you can create a template and use it whenever you want. Creating a new template is about as easy as creating a new document. Just open a new document, adjust the settings you want in your template, then save the file to the Templates folder, making sure to use the .dot file extension. Let's create a template with Courier as the default font to illustrate the process.

1. Click General Templates in the Task Pane to open the Templates dialog box.
   
   
2. Click the General tab (if necessary) to display the General templates.
   
   
3. Click the Blank Document icon once to highlight it--this will be the basis for your Courier template. In the lower-right section of the dialog box, under "Create New," click Template, and click OK.
   
   
4. When the new template document opens, choose Courier from the font drop-down list.
   
   
5. Click the Save icon to save your document. Word will know to save the file in the proper Templates directory and to give it the .dot file extension.
   
   
6. Give the file a logical name, like Courier.dot, and click Save.
   
   

That's all there is to it! Now when you open the Templates dialog box (by clicking General Templates on the Task Pane) your new Courier template will appear under the General tab. To use your template, just click its icon to open a blank document with Courier as the font.

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