You Can Create a Template in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint by Yourself
Only use Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to type, format and edit by yourself? Then you’re too far behind. The function of the Microsoft Office applications is not single.
For example, Microsoft Office offers a lot of free templates with different themes for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms, Access, and Visio. Every template has its predefined page layouts, fonts, margins, and styles. The themes cover the users’ concerned items like business, cards, flyers, letters, education, resumes and cover letters. You can choose and open your liked and needed template, then edit the contents according to your requirements.
However, you can also create a document by yourself and save it as a template. The next time you want to use it, you can directly open and edit it furthermore.
Now, let’s start with the important step: creating a template in Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint.
In this article, we will mainly focus on these topics:
- How to create a template in Word
- How to create a template in Excel
- How to create a template in PowerPoint
No matter you are running Windows or Mac, you can always find a proper introduction that tells you how to make a Microsoft template on your device.
How to Create a Microsoft Office Template on Windows?
In this part, we will show you how to make a template in Word/Excel/PowerPoint… on your Windows computer.
How to Create a template in Word/Excel/PowerPoint on Windows?
This is a guide on how to create a template in Word. If you want to create a template in Excel or PowerPoint, these steps are also available.
Step 1: Keep the target document open. Then click File > Save As.
Step 2: Double-click This PC or Computer (depending on which Microsoft Office version you are using).
Step 3: You will see the Save As window, in which you can type a new name for your Word template into the File name box.
Step 4: Expand the options for Save as type and select Word Template. To save a workbook as a template, you should select Excel Template. To save a PowerPoint as a template, you need to select PowerPoint Template. Then, Microsoft Office will automatically jump to the C:\Users\[your computer]\Documents\Custom Office Templates folder. If your Office document contains macros, you need to select Word Macro-Enabled Template/Excel Macro-Enabled Template/PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Template.
Step 5: Click the Save button to save your Word document as a template on the templates folder.
You can change the location where the Office templates are saved. You can go to File > Options > Save, then type the folder and path you want to use in the box next to Default personal templates location. After that, every new Office template that you want to save will be stored in that folder. Additionally, when you click File > New > Personal, you can see all the templates in that folder.
How to Edit Your Microsoft Office Template?
You can edit the template at any time. You can make changes to the template you have saved before using these steps:
Step 1: Go to File > Open.
Step 2: Double-click This PC or Computer depending on the Microsoft Office version you are using.
Step 3: Go to the Custom Office Templates folder under Documents/My Documents.
Step 4: Select the target template and click Open. You can also double-click the template to open it.
Step 5: Edit the contents and formats of the document as per your requirements. Then, save the template and close it.
How to Use Your Template to Make a New Document?
If you want to make a new document using your existing template, you can follow this guide:
Step 1: Click File > New > Personal/Custom (depending on the Microsoft Office version you are using).
Step 2: Find the template you want to use and click it to open a copy of it.
Step 3: Edit the contents of the document.
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How to Create a Microsoft Office Template on Mac?
Microsoft Office is also available on macOS. If you use Microsoft Office on your Mac computer, you can
how to make a Microsoft template
How to Make a Template in Word?
Step 1: Open the target Word document.
Step 2: Open the File menu, then click Save as Template.
Step 3: When you see the Save As box, you need to name the new template. Then, you can choose a location to save the template if you want to save it to your specified folder.
Step 4: Choose Microsoft Word template (.dotx) for File Format. If your document contains macros, you need to select Microsoft Word Macro-Enabled template (.dotm).
Step 5: Click the Save button to save the template.
How to Create a Template in Excel?
Step 1: Open the target workbook.
Step 2: Click the File menu and then click Save as Template.
Step 3: The Save As box will pop up. Then, you need to type a name for the new template. If you want to save your Excel template to another location, you can make a change in the Where box.
Step 4: Choose Excel Template (.xltx) for File Format. If your document contains macros, you need to select Excel Macro-Enabled Template (.xltm).
Step 5: Click the Save button to save the template.
How to Save a PowerPoint Document as a Template in PowerPoint?
Step 1: Create and open a blank presentation.
Step 2: Click the View tab and select Slide Master.
Step 3: You can do these things to make changes to the slide master or layouts:
- Select Themes and pick a theme to add a colorful theme with special fonts and effects.
- Click Background Styles and pick a background to change the background.
- Select the slide layout that you want to hold the placeholder from the thumbnail pane, then you can add a placeholder for text, picture, chart, and other objects. You can expand Insert Placeholder and pick one type you want to add. You can also drag to draw the size of the placeholder.
Other Things You Can Do
>> Change the default templates folder
By default, the template is saved in /Users/username/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates. If you want to change the location, you can:
Step 1: Click the Word menu, then select Preferences > File Locations under Personal Settings. Step 2: Select User templates from the list under File Locations and click Modify.
Step 3: Type your specified new folder and path.
The next time when you want to save a Word template, it will be stored in the new specified folder.
>> How to create a new document using your template?
To use your saved template to create a new document, you can just open the File menu, click New from Template, and choose your needed template to open a copy of that template. Then, you can make changes to that document.
>> How to delete a template?
Step 1: Open Finder and navigate to /Users/username/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates.
Step 2: Drag the templates that you want to delete to the Trash.
Wrap Things up
If you want to know how to create a template in Word. Excel, or PowerPoint on your Windows or Mac computer, you can just try the ways introduced in this article to do the job. It is easy to do these things.
MiniTool software can also help you solve other related problems. You can tell us in the comments or contact us at [email protected]. Of course, you can also share your thoughts and suggestions with us.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Stella has been working in MiniTool Software as an English Editor for more than 7 years. Her articles mainly cover the fields of data recovery including storage media data recovery and phone data recovery, YouTube videos download, partition management, and video conversions.