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Starting off right: Templates and built-in content in the new Word

This week’s post comes from Seth Fox, the Word program manager who has been working closely with our design team to bring fresh new content to Word 2013. 

We know you put a lot of effort into making a document look great. At the end of the day, you want a polished document that invites people in. One that is professional looking, with obvious attention to the details, and that you can be proud to share with your friends, family, colleagues, coworkers, or the world. In this release, we wanted to make it easier than ever for you to create those documents.

In this post, I’ll talk about how new starting options, templates, and built-in content can make it easier to go from start to finish using the new Word in the Office Customer Preview.

Starting off right

When you start Word you don’t always want to start from a blank page. You might want to read or review a document, continue writing a document you’ve already started, or start something new from an existing document or template. The new Start experience in Word is designed with that in mind. It allows you to start from recent documents, templates, or from a blank document in just a few clicks.

You can pin the documents and templates that matter most so that they’re only a click away when starting Word. Clicking on a template will show you a larger thumbnail and provide a brief description about the template.

Pinned templates will never show a preview.  You can simply double click a pinned template’s thumbnail to quickly open the template.

If you have custom templates you can view them on the Start screen in a separate tab. Just go to Options and under Save add the path of your templates folder where it says “Default personal templates location”.

You can easily dismiss the Start screen and get started writing by pressing the escape key or double clicking on “blank document”. If you want to skip straight to a blank document each time you start Word, you can uncheck “Show the Start screen when the application starts” in the Word Options dialog.

Starting from templates

Trying to create a document from scratch can be tough. If you have a specific task or document look in mind, searching for the right template can save you time and help you create a great final product. You might need to write your resume, print a birthday card, or create a report. We offer a variety of templates to make it quick and easy. Need to work on your resume for that next big opportunity, but aren’t sure what content will impress your interviewer? We have templates that can help you out.

To find the right template, simply launch the new Word and search for the type of document you’d like to create.

We know templates aren’t a one-size-fits-all deal. In addition to offering a variety of templates to start with, we’ve designed our templates to be customizable. You can change your color palette, style set, or theme and the template will update to match. Some templates also feature extra cover pages and textboxes, which can be easily swapped to give your document a new look. For example, if you know you’re going to print out this student report, but don’t want to print out a large colorful picture, you can swap out the cover page with the text only version by going to Insert, selecting Cover Page, and clicking on Text Cover.

Built in content

Whether you’re working on a document you created from scratch or started from a template, to make a document look its best, you typically want more than just text. You may insert a cover page to give a good first impression or add a pull quote to draw your readers’ focus to a key point.  When you do, you want it all to have a cohesive, well-designed look. We offer built-in content to save you time and help make your document look great. Check out the Insert tab to find headers, footers, textbox, page numbers, and more to make it quick and easy to add content to your document.

We’ve designed this content to not only make your document look great, but to also work well together. For example, you can insert the Facet cover page, header, and footer to have a coordinated document that all matches the Facet look.

This lets you create a polished and visually consistent document.

Once you add your content, simply add in your personal details. If you change your mind after insertion, it’s no problem. You can easily swap out content. If they share the same info, such as document title, it will be automatically entered for you so you don’t have to retype it. For example, I inserted the Ion cover page, filled out the info about my paper, and then swapped it out for one I liked better by clicking Insert, Cover Page, and selecting Semaphore.

Thanks for reading! We hope you find it easier than ever to end up with documents you’re proud to share with the world.

The Word content and building blocks feature team is proud to show off the great new content you can use in Word 2013.