How To Do Everything With Microsoft Office Word 2007

You can Create new documents, Save documents, Tell Word where to keep your documents and which format to use. Now that you know how to navigate Word’s interface, you’re ready to create documents of your own. This shows you how to create and save documents. If you’re experienced with Windows programs, creating and saving documents may seem as straightforward as breaking an egg—but because Word offers many features and options to let you create exactly the documents you need, you must make many decisions even for creating and saving. To make these decisions, you need to understand the essentials of how Word handles documents and templates, the skeletons on which each document is based. This chapter tells you what you need to know. Every document is based on a template—a file that’s used as the basis for the document. A template can contain anything from simple formatting to a fully formatted and nearly complete document that requires the user to do nothing more than fill in a few fields of information to complete a form. (For example, you might use such a template for a report, for a travel request, or for a performance evaluation.) A template can even include macros written in the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language that serve to automate the process of completing the document. When you need a new document, you have several options, which are discussed in the following sections:

Create a new document based on a template A template is a file that contains preset

content, formatting, Create new documents.

Microsoft Office Online is a good source of templates, but you’ll find many others on theWeb. (Use a search such as free “Microsoft Word” template, using the double quotationmarks to keep Microsoft Word together.)Unless you have a good reason to trust a site that provides templates (for example, you

know the people who run the site, or the site is run by a well-known company), treat all

templates as potentially dangerous: Templates that use the Word 2007 .dotx file extension are safe, because this file format cannot contain macros (short programs that can take a variety of actions on your computer, including deleting files) Templates that use the Word 2007 .dotm file extension contain code.