Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Word 2003 in 24 Hours

As you learned in Hour 10, "Working with Templates," the advantage of using templates ( .dot files) is that you can use them over and over to create documents without ever overwriting the template itself. Furthermore, if you have macros that you or someone else wrote to use with the form, you can (and should) save them in the template so that they are always available with the form (see "Where to Go from Here" later in this hour.)

To save your form as a template, follow these steps:

1. With your completed and protected form onscreen, choose File, Save As .

2. In the Save As dialog box, display the Save As Type drop-down list and choose Document Template (*.dot) .

3. Save the file in the Templates folder or one of its subfolders .

   Hour 10 covered a lot of information that you might want to review at this point. In particular, it would be a good idea to review steps 68 in the "Personalizing Word's Templates" section.

4. Click the Save button.