Multiple templates, a single stylesheet and maintaining consisten cy in MS-WORD?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

France Baril reports: <<I have build 3 letter templates (.dot): Letter
English, Letter French, A4 French. All 3 templates use the same paragraph
and character styles. 1. Can I modify the paragraph and character styles in
one template and import them into the others?>>

Try using the "Organizer". With the template open, then open the Tools menu
and select "Templates and Add-ins". At the bottom of the dialog box, click
the "Organizer" button. You can now select two documents (in your case, two
templates) and simply copy the styles from one to the other.

But there's probably a much easier solution: Create only a single template,
make all the necessary changes in that one template, then use "save as" to
create three separate versions. (For example, if the first two versions use
North American paper sizes, simply change the page size to A4 before saving
the third version.) One important note: Make sure that when you "save as",
the document type displayed at the bottom of the dialog box says "template".

<<2. Word translate the system styles' name depending on which Word version
the user has installed. For exemple, body text becomes corps de texte if the
user as the French version of Word on his machine. However, user designed
styles are not translated. Is there any way I can provide 2 names for the
style, one French and one English, so that they adapt to the users'
workstation.>>

That's considerably tougher. I can't think of any way to do it
automatically, other than if you're skilled at writing macros. (In that
case, you could--for example--write a macro to replace "body text" with
"corps de texte".) The simplest solution is to avoid using Word's built-in
styles and create your own with bilingual names; for example, rather than
"body text", create a style called "body-corps". You can now use this style
in all three templates.

Of course, whether you put the French or English words first, you'll still
offend some of your colleagues. (Speaking from experience here... Quebec
French/Canadian English. <g>) So a slightly more complex system might work
better: If you use a single template as the basis for the three templates
that you'll eventually distribute, create two separate styles: "body text"
and "corps de texte" in the same document, and set "corps de texte" to be
"based on body text" in the style definition. When you change "body text",
"corps de texte" will change to match.

<<The company who ordered the templates has offices over the world and needs
to be able to keep everything standard from one country to the other.>>

One solution that works well in such cases is to ensure that whoever has the
_authority_ to change the templates also has _responsibility_ for changing
all the templates and for distributing them to everyone who will use those
templates. That's the easiest way (perhaps the only way) to ensure that all
the templates are kept in synch. If the templates are made available over an
intranet, then most users will automatically receive the updated template
each time they create a new file. Of course, you'll still have to remind
people not to store outdated copies on their local hard disk. That's much
tougher.

<<If we all spoke the same language, life would be easier, but we would
loose so many of life's subtilities!>

Amen to that. Or "vive la différence", if you prefer. <g>

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur. (Oh! Was I
speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips
out.)--Anonymous

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