New Templates?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Jessica Weissman has: <<... the chance to revise our company's  
internal and external document templates. I plan to: 1)       Ditch  
the chaotic mess of styles that have accreted and restore the  
original built-in versions of Word's list and heading styles>>

Good start. Note, however, that so long as Normal.dot lives somewhere  
on your system, its built-in styles (plus any accretions) will be  
available to all open documents on your computer. If you want a clean  
template, you need to delete the garbage styles from Normal.dot, then  
save a copy of that newly clean template as your new working  
template. You can do this by simply closing Word, deleting  
Normal.dot, and restarting Word (which will cheerfully create a new,  
clean Normal.dot), but then you lose any customizations stored in  
that template. So it may be better to do this manually.

A few responses to significant points:

<<2)       Redo the heading styles to meet our needs (i.e. hijacking  
Heading 6 through Heading 9 for appendix headers)>>

Better to define styles whose names mean something. Quick test: Which  
is clearer: "Appendix H1", or "Heading 6"? <g> That same comment  
applies to all new styles you create: make the names sufficiently  
obvious that users can pick the right style. And keep the name short  
enough that the full name shows in the list of styles (in the  
Formatting toolbar). This minimizes errors for people who apply  
formatting this way.

<<I'll start with a clean copy of Word's normal template and recreate  
everything by hand, to avoid corruption.>>

Just make sure to save your new template under a new name (e.g.,  
HillCrestLabs.dot). Normal.dot is vulnerable to corruption should  
Word crash or close improperly, and is a major target for virus  
writers. And don't forget to include the new template in your backup  
routine. Keep dated copies of this template going back many months,  
ideally one copy (version) for each time you made a change in the  
template; that way, if corruption occurs, you can revert to a  
previous version that you know is good, minimizing the amount of  
rework required.

<<I'd like to base all styles on Body Text instead of Normal...

Good choice. In a stunning bit of illogic, Normal.dot defines heading  
styles as "based on the normal paragraph style". In what universe  
does that design choice make any sense?

<<... so I can do the make-Normal-text-purple trick that helps  
enforce the use of styles. I'd make Normal red, but some of our  
developers are colorblind.>>

I assume you mean that you're going to color any styles that aren't  
part of the template? Not sure this is particularly useful, but if it  
works for you...

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
----------------------------------------------------


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