Request for John McGhie

Question

Greetings and Salutations;

My name is James and I work as a Content Specialist for my company.  One of my job parameters is to design and write training manuals.  Several years ago I ran across a document named "Word Templates; A guide to their Creation" by John McGhie, Microsoft Word MVP.

It was a beautiful document and very instructional on how to create these templates in Word 2003 written in 2008.  Although I was using Word 2007, many of the instructions were still compatible.  My problem is that we are now using Word 2013 and I am having difficulties navigating the instructions since many of the mechanics have either been renamed, moved, or no longer exist.

My basic question is: "Did John create an updated version of his Word Templates document?"

I read his homepage where he requested not to email him but to post.  So, here I am posting.

Thank you

Answer 1

I'm guessing you're referring to the article you can download from http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm. It does not appear to have been updated, but I will let John know that there is a demand for this.

Answer 2

Sorry, John.  I cannot agree with your statement that "templates are now somewhat deprecated"

I believe that the in-your-face-full of eye candy with which you are confronted when using File>New is testament to templates still being in vogue, though admittedly, there are some really awful templates on Office.com Templates. 

Personally, I never use File>New as I have the "New Document or Template" command as the first button on the QAT.

Also EVERY word document IS based on a template.  It is NOT possible to create a Word document without it being based on a template.

As for the distribution of templates within a corporation, that is in the hands of the Network Administrators, many of whom of course do not use or understand how Word is supposed to work.  But it is well within their power to distribute templates by the method espoused by Jonathon West in his article

"Distributing macros to other users” at:

http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DistributeMacros.htm

Answer 3

Hi James:

The basic issue that I have is that templates are now somewhat deprecated.

The place they were most useful was in corporate workgroup service. The security provisions on a well-managed network these days make it really difficult to distribute and use templates.

Even if you can do that, the network security provisions normally will not permit the active content to run.

These problems will be much worse in future versions of Word.  Office 365 typically wants to save everything to the cloud, and template sharing is impossible there.  The latest versions of Word are being "sandboxed" for dissemination via various companies' App Stores, not just Microsoft's.

And to add final insult: you need a copy of Visual Studio to customise the user interface to employ the customisations.  My guess is that using Visual Studio is a bit beyond most of our audience (and me!).

I would be interested in your thoughts as to what would be ost helpful.  I'll follow this thread and maybe everyone can weigh in with suggestions?

Cheers

Answer 4

What in particular do you need to know? The basic principles have not changed in Word 2013.

Answer 5

Thank you very much.  It would be a great help in my current project.  :)