How to setup Templates in Word 365 and Outlook 365

[khsayeed]

Hello:

I am a new user of this discussion forum. So please bear with me.

I have used the feature of Templates extensively in my last Office version (Office 2007). I have now upgraded to Office 365 and face the following lack pof understanding of the use of Office 365.

In Office 2007, I was able to set up common templates for Outlook and Word using the Change Styles Button on the Format tab. Unfortunately, I do have the exact screenshot to show here, but the closest is the  following:

Upon clicking on the Styles Button, a set of named Template Files would show up, one of which could be clicked on to apply to the current document being edited, whether in Outlook or in Word.

The actual Template file be displayed woulkd exist in a system folder such as Quickstyles or other, which needed to be set up with the ,dotx or .dotm Template files.

The option was also available when editing a Word document or Outlook message to modify the Template file and select whether the modified Template file should be applied only to the current document or to all subsequent documents or messages.

Now, all I see is apparently, is the textual unnamed descriptions of various formats in the displayed Styles screen shown above.

I hope the above provides an idea of what I feel is missing.  Can anyone help me with this ?

Thank you.

[#2]

@khsayeed You appear to be confusing Templates with Styles as it is in the Modify Style dialog that there is the option for the (modified) style to be applied either to the active document or to all documents created from the template from which the active document was created.

That said, there has not been any change in this feature between Word 2007 and the Word desktop application in Microsoft 365.  

[#3]

2022-11-26

Thank you Doug Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP for replying to my post.
I agree that Styles are different from Templates.

I understand that there are several Styles within a Template, eg. Header Level 1, Header Level 2, etc,

I understand that in each named Template document, e.g. Template.dotx or Template.dotm, there are several such Styles that can be modified and the document saved back in a specific folder. The named Template document can then be assigned to an Outlook Message or to a Word document that is open and being edited.

Can you please tell me how this is done in Office 365 ? Thank you.

[#4]

@khsayeed In Outlook, create a new message and then go to the Format Text tab of the ribbon and modify the style(s) that you want to use so that they have the desired formatting

and, like in Word, before dismissing the Modify Style Dialog, select the New documents based on this template radio button.

Outlook also has its own template (*.oft) files, each of which can be set up with its own set of styles if required.  However to create a message from a particular template, it is necessary to use a macro that contains the command

CreateItemFromTemplate

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/outlook.application.createitemfromtemplate

[#5]

2022-11-26

Thank you again Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP, for replying to my last post.

Regrettably, I am not a programmer and am not familiar with Visual Basic to be able to use the contents of the link you have provided.

Would you know about the template files with extensions like .dotx and dotm, which were available in Office 2007 (Word 2007 and Outlook 2007) and were used to assign a set of Styles to an existing document (or a new document) which was opened in either of the two applications mentioned above ?

Please let me know where I can find the procedure to accomplish the same objective in Outlook 365 and Word 365 ?

Thanks.

[#6]

In Microsoft 365, Outlook has its own editor. By default, the style used for a Message is the Normal style. You can modify that, or any of the available styles in the same way as you modify styles in Word and by setting the option for the modifications to apply to "New documents based on this template", the modified style will apply to all new messages that you create.

While it is not necessary to do so, you can in Word open the NormalEmail.dotm template that you will find in your User Templates folder and make modifications to it in Word. However, the process of making the modifications in Outlook is identical so there is really no reason to do it in Word.

[#7]

2022-11-26

Thank you again Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP, for your reply.

I fear that I have not conveyed to you properly what I am looking for in Word 365 (and in Outlook 365).
Please refer to the following extract from a Microsoft Support website which may clarify the issue for your purposes.



==================================
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/load-or-unload-a-template-or-add-in-program-2479fe53-f849....

Load templates or add-ins
When you load a template or add-in, it remains loaded for the current Word session only. If you quit and then restart Word, the template or add-in is not automatically reloaded.

In Word 2010, 2013, or 2016, select File > Options > Add-Ins.

In Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button Office button image, and then select Word Options > Add-ins.

In the Manage list, select Word Add-ins, and then click Go.

Click the Templates tab.

Under Global templates and add-ins, select the check box next to the template or add-in that you want to load.

If the template or add-in you want does not appear in the box, click Add, switch to the folder that contains the template or add-in you want, click it, and then click OK.
=================================

I have been able to do the above procedure, but am unable to see the option on a menu item in say Word 365 to attach the template file (say a .dotx file) to an open Word document.

I am unable to attach the screen print of my effort in line with the above. Please let me know how I can send you this on the post, or separately to your email address.

[#8]

@khsayeed To attach a file or screen shot, click on the Open full text editor link

and you will then see

All Word documents have a template attached to them.  If the document was created by selecting the Blank document button, the template will be the Normal template.

If you want to attach another template to a document, go to the Developer tab of the ribbon and click on the Document Template button and then click on the Attach button and browse to the template that you want to attach.

I am not really sure what you are wanting to do, or why you are having difficulty as there is really no change, as far as templates in Word are concerned, between Word 2007 and Word in Microsoft 365.

However, I suggest that you take a look at the following page of the late Shauna Kelly's website.

https://shaunakelly.com/word/templates/attachtemplate.html

Or other pages of Shauna's website that deal with templates.

[#9]

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP

2022-11-27

Thank you for your last reply Doug Robbins:

I have appended above the screen print of the Word 365 screen showing a Word document that I just created on my laptop.

I am unable to find the "Developer Tab" on this page. Am I looking at the wrong screen. Please let me know.

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

[#10]

2022-11-27

Thank you for your last reply Doug Robbins:

I have appended above the screen print of the Word 365 screen showing a Word document that I just created on my laptop.

I am unable to find the "Developer Tab" on this page. Am I looking at the wrong screen ? Please let me know.

[#11]

@khsayeed To display the Developer tab on the ribbon, go to File>Options>Customize Ribbon and check the box for Developer on the right hand side of the dialog

[#12]

2022-11-29

Thank you for your last reply Doug Robbins:

I am sorry for the delay in replying to your last response.

I have been trying get a version of Office 2007 o a laptop so that I can take screen prints and show the sequence of screens which would illustrate what I am after from Word 365. Unfortunately, since I have already moved to Microsoft 365 on my laptop, I do not want to go back to Office 2007 to show what I was able to do before in Office 2007. Presently, I am trying load Office 2007 on an old laptop running XP, so that I can go through the screen print sequence with you.

I wonder if you would have access to an Office 2007 system, so that we can work on the procedure used in it remotely.
RE. THE PROCEDURE YOU SUGGESTED:
==========================
I have tried the procedure you outlined and have been able to attach another template (in addition to the Normal Template which is automatically attached) file (.dotx) to the new Word document that I had on screen.

However, I shall to visualize and document what was possible in Word or OUtlook 2007, from memory:
1. Assume you have a document open in either Outlook or Word 2007, eith a new document or an existing document. It already has Normal.dotx loaded iand attached to it.
2. To attach and (override) the normal a custiom template that you have already created and put in a specific directory, the following procedure would be used:
2.1 Click of either Home or Format menu item (depending on whether you are in Outlook or Word).
2.2 One of the items on the Ribbon would be, if I recall correctly, Select or Find or Set Styles.
2.3 Upon clicking a pop-up would display, showing among other items, a list of named Template files (which will be found in a specific directory (eg. QuickStyles, or Templates or other), I do not recall exactly which one, and which are stored as named dotx or dotm files).
2.4 You are now at liberty to click on one of those Template names to select the template you would like to attach, so as to modify the "style set" to be used in your open document.
2.5 After this is done, with the cursor on a line in the open document, the clicking on one of the particular styles displayed in the ribbon will cause the format of the line to reflect the format in the Template file that you had selected when you attached the specific template to the open document on your screen, e.g.
2.6 If your text line in the document had the paragraph format Normal, and you clicked on the ribbon item say Header 1, the format of the line would change to the following:
Say, if it was the first selection, it would display as
1. sacAcsdvcsadvasdv
If you clicked on the second line, it would display as
2. asdAFafASDCSA

2.7. A similar scenario would apply to the application of other styles such as Header 2, Header 3, List Style, etc., which would all be selected from the ribbon (the ribbon would only display the name of style and not any sample description, contrary to the scheme used in Office 365, which provides a sample of the applicable format below the style name). Note that the style format in each case would be derived from the Template document that you had attached to the document, which could be changed very simply by selecting a different Template name from the list of Templates, using the procedure described earlier.

Dioug Robbins, I hope I have described what I was able to do in Office 2007
and am not carrying "Coals to Newcastle" in describing the features of Office 2007.

I shall still try to send you a set of the screen prints I mentioned earlier in this email.

Meanwhile, if you can come up with an Office 2007 package and try out its Template attachment features for Outlook and Word, it may clarify the scenario better than the above rudimentary description of it.

Thank you for your patience. Regards.

[#13]

@khsayeed 

khsayeed

 

 replied to  Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP

‎Nov 29 2022 09:03 PM

2022-11-29

Thank you for your last reply Doug Robbins:

I am sorry for the delay in replying to your last response.

I have been trying get a version of Office 2007 o a laptop so that I can take screen prints and show the sequence of screens which would illustrate what I am after from Word 365. Unfortunately, since I have already moved to Microsoft 365 on my laptop, I do not want to go back to Office 2007 to show what I was able to do before in Office 2007. Presently, I am trying load Office 2007 on an old laptop running XP, so that I can go through the screen print sequence with you.

I wonder if you would have access to an Office 2007 system, so that we can work on the procedure used in it remotely.
RE. THE PROCEDURE YOU SUGGESTED:
==========================
I have tried the procedure you outlined and have been able to attach another template (in addition to the Normal Template which is automatically attached) file (.dotx) to the new Word document that I had on screen.

However, I shall to visualize and document what was possible in Word or OUtlook 2007, from memory:
1. Assume you have a document open in either Outlook or Word 2007, eith a new document or an existing document. It already has Normal.dotx loaded iand attached to it.
2. To attach and (override) the normal a custiom template that you have already created and put in a specific directory, the following procedure would be used:
2.1 Click of either Home or Format menu item (depending on whether you are in Outlook or Word).
2.2 One of the items on the Ribbon would be, if I recall correctly, Select or Find or Set Styles.
2.3 Upon clicking a pop-up would display, showing among other items, a list of named Template files (which will be found in a specific directory (eg. QuickStyles, or Templates or other), I do not recall exactly which one, and which are stored as named dotx or dotm files).
2.4 You are now at liberty to click on one of those Template names to select the template you would like to attach, so as to modify the "style set" to be used in your open document.
2.5 After this is done, with the cursor on a line in the open document, the clicking on one of the particular styles displayed in the ribbon will cause the format of the line to reflect the format in the Template file that you had selected when you attached the specific template to the open document on your screen, e.g.
2.6 If your text line in the document had the paragraph format Normal, and you clicked on the ribbon item say Header 1, the format of the line would change to the following:
Say, if it was the first selection, it would display as
1. sacAcsdvcsadvasdv
If you clicked on the second line, it would display as
2. asdAFafASDCSA

2.7. A similar scenario would apply to the application of other styles such as Header 2, Header 3, List Style, etc., which would all be selected from the ribbon (the ribbon would only display the name of style and not any sample description, contrary to the scheme used in Office 365, which provides a sample of the applicable format below the style name). Note that the style format in each case would be derived from the Template document that you had attached to the document, which could be changed very simply by selecting a different Template name from the list of Templates, using the procedure described earlier.

Dioug Robbins, I hope I have described what I was able to do in Office 2007
and am not carrying "Coals to Newcastle" in describing the features of Office 2007.

I shall still try to send you a set of the screen prints I mentioned earlier in this email.

Meanwhile, if you can come up with an Office 2007 package and try out its Template attachment features for Outlook and Word, it may clarify the scenario better than the above rudimentary description of it.

Note:

I have attached the set of Templates files that I have used in Office 2007, say, one for legal documents, one for personal correspondence, one for writing to a charitable organization , all of them being in a Structured Document format using Header Levels, Paragraph Styles, List levels, etc.

Thank you for your patience. Regards.

[#14]

@khsayeed The default location for user templates in Word  has always been:

C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates

which you can check via File>Options>Advanced>File Locations and select the User Templates item and then click on Modify so that you can see the full path

I would suggest that you modify the Quick Access Toolbar by adding the New Document or Template command that you will find in the All Commands category.

When you use that button, you will then see the following dialog that is populated with the templates from the User Templates folder (and also the Workgroup Templates folder), with the templates in any sub-folders of those folders appearing as tabs in the dialog.

[#15]

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

Thank you for your insightful reply Doug Robbins:

I have followed your advice and have gone through the sequence of displaying the screen showing the several Template files in User Templates Folder when editing a Word Document.

However, when clicking on one of the Template files, it opens up a NEW DOCUMENT having the styles identical to those in the Template, along with any text in the template.

In the older version of Word/Office, it was possible to assign the template to the already open file, and the styles in the assigned Template were reflected in the Quick Styles displayed on the Ribbon of the already open document. 

I have attached a set of screen prints to show the procedure which was used then, in part only, along a brief explanation below:

1. The first screenshot is the existing Word document.

2.  Next, clicking on the Ribbon menu item Change Styles produced a pop-up which showed the menu item Style Set.

3. Next, clicking on the Style Set menu item, brought up another pop-up, not the one shown in the attached screen shot , but a pop-up which included a list of Template Files (from a templates Folder, I do not  recall which that folder was). Clicking on one of the items in that list would result in assigning the styles in the selected template, to the document. Also the Quick Styles in the Ribbon would display the same Styles as in the attached Template. I do not recall if there was also a separate item in the pop-up list which would assign the template styles to the Quick Styles displayed in the ribbon.

I would appreciate your comments on how to Assign a set of Styles from a Template to an existing Word/Outlook document . 

I look forward to your reply. Thank you.

[#16]

@khsayeed Your screen shots are of Outlook, NOT Word.  

Further, as I think I advised previously Outlook no longer uses Word for creating and editing messages.  Instead, it has its own "Word-like" editor and it could well be that there are some differences as that in Word is likely to be more capable that the one in Outlook.

I am not really sure what it is that you want to do, but in Word, you can still attach a template to a document via the Templates and Add-ins dialog

However, see:

https://shaunakelly.com/word/templates/attachtemplate.html

[#17]

2022-12-07

Thank you for your reply Doug Robbins:

I am sorry that I was not thinking about the fact that I was working with an Outlook message and not a Word document when I attached the screen prints.

However, I am a bit confused by what needs to be done to attach a template to an Existing document (not to a New document) or to an existing Outlook message (say opened from then drafts folder in Outlook, since the procedure in the older version of Word was the same for both document type.

Could you please provide a complete sample sequence of the procedure, starting with setting up a structured template in the correct Folder and applying the template to an existing Word document, so as to change its styles to the attached template in Word 365.

Could you please also do the same for an existing Outlook message (say opened from the Drafts folder in Outlook 365 .

This will provide me with a method of proceeding in future, for both types of documents.

Thank you very much.

[#18]

@khsayeed To attach a template to an existing Word document, with the document open, go to the Developer tab of the ribbon and click on the Document Template button to display the dialog shown in my previous response.

Outlook does not have a corresponding facility that would allow the attachment of a different template to a message.  If you want to create a message from a particular template, you would need to have that template saved as an .oft file and the easiest way to use such a file is to simply double click on it.

[#19]

@khsayeedI suspect that you are talking about the [Quick] Style Sets which are very different from Templates.

Since Word 2013, these can be found in the Design tab.

[#20]

@Charles_Kenyon Thanks Charles for the advice.

I have been able to apply Styles to an existing or new document just by selecting Format - Styles List in Outlook, where the Styles, probably from the Quick Styles List show up on the screen as a multiline text display with the name of the Style Set at the bottom of the text image. It was there all along, but I was expecting to see the older version display, which was a single line with only the name of the Style Set.

I believe this applies to Word as well.

Thanks for your interest in my problems with the new Office 365, of which I have many.