Forum Discussion
Word online Templates
Hi All,
My internal communications team would like to add our own branded templates to Office365 so that when you click on the word online tile you are presented with our corporate templates.
Is that possible? I've had a good search and cannot see how to do it.
Thanks,
James
You can get around this by uploading template documents (not dotx or dotm, but docx*) to an accessible 'brand' library and then asking users to open and then 'save as' from there. Making the library read-only will limit the potential for accidential change to the document.
*If you use 'dotx' or 'docm' the 'Edit in Browser' option is not available (at least in our tenant).
15 Replies
I cannot think of an acceptable reason why a huge developer like Microsoft cannot provide it's online Word users with the simple means of storing document templates online. It seems to be a minimal change and a basic feature.
Could it be that it's less favorable if all current full product users move to online only? I hope someone (@microsoft or outside) can give me a more satisfying reason.
- Hi James,
Hopefully you found a solution! Else I have a few options.
You can use corporate templates within SharePoint and distribute them.
Another option is to use the library on the local machine for templates and save them on sharepoint.
And option 3 is to use a template management tool (download in the Microsoft store). Then you have the corporate templates on a server that are simply accessible in Office 365 and save the document on your Sharepoint. we have a central SharePoint template library and all users sync that library to their local machine and have Word point to that folder as personal templates. I m guessing that will work in other office programs
Hey Simon, thanks for the info!
Did you follow a 'best practice/how to' on this? Could be me ... but it seems like a simple thing that (certainly for the new experience) lacks a good instruction. Helpful links are always welcome ;-).Sadly it's one I worked out myself in house - although I note another contributor suggested much the same thing.... The process I used was:
- Create New SharePoint Library - call it group templates or whatever
- Upload the required templates to library
- Give all users read only access to that library
- Send link to all users instructing them to sync that library to their PC's (which they do from SharePoint)
- Open file explorer on local machine and locate the newly synced folder
- Select that folder
- Click in address bar at top of explorer window to see the full file path
- Select all and copy path to clipboard
- Open Word
- Click on file/ options/ save
- Paste the path from clipboard to the field "default peronal templates location"
- Click OK and close Word
- Open Word
- Click on new then personal and all the templates should now be available
- Whenever templates are updated, new ones added or deleted everyone is seamlessly updated.
- My guess is that's its the same in Excel and Powerpoint
You can get around this by uploading template documents (not dotx or dotm, but docx*) to an accessible 'brand' library and then asking users to open and then 'save as' from there. Making the library read-only will limit the potential for accidential change to the document.
*If you use 'dotx' or 'docm' the 'Edit in Browser' option is not available (at least in our tenant).
We are not huge fans of word on line - the editing is not always WYSIWYG... Our workaround has been to create a series of branded templates and save them to SharePoint. Users sync the relevant library and then point to that location as their default template location in Word. We have 20 standard documents that everyone uses and that we now only have to update once, centrally... It's an offline solution but it works well for us as our users have word locally....
Did it end up working for you?
- Sorry, but this not possible. Office Online does not provide the possibility to add custom templates to either Word Online, PowerPoint Online or Excel Online
