Modify existing document templates - Microsoft Word Tutorial

- [Instructor] There are many document templates included with the Microsoft Word application, and you'll need to know how to modify existing personal document templates for the exam. Let's first start by taking you over to where there are some templates that you can start working with from this application. So if we go to the File tab, and then from the backstage menu, let's select New and instead of creating something from scratch by selecting Blank document, if we scroll down just a bit, notice in this area I have two tabs. I have one that says Office and one that says Personal. And it's okay if you do not see these tabs. The reason that I have these is at some point I did have a personal template created and so the first time that you create a template of your own, it puts it into this Personal tab area. You'll notice right now I don't have any. I've since deleted that template, so it's okay if you're not seeing these two tabs but what you should see is this area that says Search for online templates where you can type in what you'd like to search for. Let's say that we want to search for resume. Type in resume. Here are all of the templates that you can choose from. We can also select Back, which is what we'll do, and we can look through some of the Suggested search topics like Flyers, and we'll scroll on down here. And then if you find one like this pet volunteer opportunity, if I select this, shows a larger thumbnail, and over here on the right, it shows me who this was provided by. So Microsoft provided this template, gives me a bit more details about it, the size of the file, and a way to create a new document based on this template by selecting the Create button. Now, I'm going to click the X to close out of this, and show you that if we scroll on up here towards the top and if I go ahead and select Back, it takes me right back to where we were. Now, if I have my own document that I want to turn into a template and have that available here to be able to say I want to create something new based on my personal template, it will then create a document based on that, and that's what's going to go into this Personal tab. So remember, if you don't see the Personal tab yet, that is okay, just means you don't have any personal templates created quite yet, but that's what we're going to do. All right, let's select this back arrow here at the top of the backstage menu, and that takes me back out here. Now, this is the file that we are going to be working with. So if you don't have this exercise file open quite yet, go ahead and pause this video, and go open the 02_01_Template file and then hit Play again. Now, this file, although the name of the file says template, it's not really a template yet, and how we know that is if I select this downward-facing arrow, you'll notice in the file name over here to the right that it's a .docx which means that that is a Microsoft Word document. If it said .dotx, we would know that that is a template type of a file. So when you open this file, you'll notice it's not quite a template yet but that's what we're going to create. So let's click outside of this area. Let's go to the File tab. We'll go ahead and select Save As. From the Save As menu here, select Browse. You'll notice at the top, your file path might be a bit different than mine depending on where you have saved your exercise files and which directory you went into last, when you go ahead and go to the Save As menu, so mine is going to the desktop, then within a folder called Exercise Files of subfolder chapter two, and then, within that, the 02_01 folder, right? Now, it's okay because this is going to change the minute that we say that we want to save this as a .dotx, which is a template file. So it's going down here to the Save as type and notice that it says Word Document, select that area, and the fourth choice from the top is Word Template. And that's what we're going to go ahead and select. Now, the minute that you select that, now take a look up here at the top. Notice that we're no longer in that same folder that we were just a moment ago. Now it's going to the Documents folder and a subfolder in there called Custom Office Templates. All right, that's where we want it to go, so that it will be available when we go to that New menu to be able to create a document based on this template. Let's update the file name. So down here where it says 02_01_Template, let's change that, we'll call it Red30 Tech Speakers. Then we'll go ahead and select Save in the lower right corner. Now, you notice at the top that the name has been updated. It has been saved to this PC and if we select this downward-facing arrow, notice that it is showing a file extension of .dotx. I'm going to click outside of this, and if I want to make some changes to it, I can. So let's say that I want to scroll on down and maybe I want to take out the makers word and then we'll scroll on down a bit more and we'll take this text out and then I'm going to go ahead and save it, and we've saved the changes to that. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and close this file. I'm going to click the X in the upper right corner and I want to take you out here to File Explorer. So to get to File Explorer, you can use the keyboard shortcut, the Windows Key + E for Explorer. Or if you go down to your Windows task bar here, you may have it pinned here that you can select and get to it that way as well. What I want to show you is where those templates are really saved, the minute that you say I want to save this as that template type of a file, a template type of a document. You'll notice over here for this PC, if I go to the C drive, the local disk, I'm going to go ahead and expand that. And then if I go to Users, the user account, I'm logged in as LinkedIn Learning. So you'll go to your user account that you're logged in as. I'm going to expand that. And then I want to go to the Documents folder. And then within the Documents folder over here, you'll notice Custom Office Templates. That is the folder, I go in there. That is where all of your files need to reside if you want them to show up in that Personal tab area, when you go to File New within the Word application. Let's go ahead and open Word again. So I'm going to go down to my taskbar. I'm going to go over here to Search, type in Word, select it from the list. We're opening the Word application. Now, from the menu, if I go to New, and now if I go to the Personal tab, and I'll go ahead and scroll on down. Here is the new template that was just created and will always be here for selection to be able to create new documents based on this template. Now you know how to create and modify existing templates and you have a way to be able to try out all sorts of templates. You may discover really great ones for the types of documents you need to create, and to be able to practice with more types of templates on how to modify, how to create your own personal templates, and how to access those later on.