SpecProcessor! part 2 - document templates

With so many features, it can be difficult to understand all of the capabilities of today's word processor, or to know the best place to begin. But we have to start somewhere, so let's begin our discussion with document templates. (As noted in the first article in this series, we are going to concentrate on Microsoft Word, but most of the principles can be applied to other word processors.)

Word has a single basic document template, with the filename "normal.dot". Unless you choose another template as the basis for your documents, all of the characteristics for the work you do will be defined by "normal.dot". This includes fonts, paragraph spacing, heading format, headers, footers, and many other format options. Any of these characteristics can be modified within a document, but unless the document template is changed, all new documents will have the same default characteristics.

The use of document templates can be a blessing or a curse. Properly used, they make it easy to create documents in any preferred format. Perhaps more important, the entire appearance of an existing document can be changed in an instant by attaching it to a different template. This feature alone has saved countless hours when we are required to change formats to meet the requirements of different clients. But, if used carelessly, the style definitions contained in a document template can drive unwary users crazy when fonts and spacing seem to change without reason.

Let me illustrate the power of this feature with a real-life example:

Some of the features of our standard specification format include: 10 point Times New Roman font; bold uppercase title, part titles, article titles, and end of section paragraph; specific amounts of leading before various outline levels; an outline address system that uses article numbers in the 1.01, 1.02… format; all left-aligned text, with varying combinations of indents for different outline levels.

One of our clients told us that we would have to change to their format, which included: 14 point bold Arial section title, 12 point bold Arial part titles, 11 point bold article titles, and 11 point normal Arial for lower levels; different amounts of leading than we use; an outline address system that uses article numbers in the 1.1, 1.2… format; centered title and end of section paragraph, otherwise all left-aligned text; and different combinations of indents than we use.

It took about fifteen minutes to set up a new document template with all of the client's format requirements. After that, using the "Templates and Add-ins" dialog box, all we had to do was attach our own specifications to the new document template and check the "Automatically update document styles" box, and our format was changed to that of the client.

It's easy to see that the document template can be a time saver. Assuming a conversion time of three minutes per section, a project manual with sixty sections would take 180 minutes, or three hours, to convert. Nearly all of that would be eliminated by setting up a new document template.

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