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Joe McGuire
 
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There may be some more elegant solutions but I have run into the similar
issues and solved them this way:

Font: To set your fonts for the template it is better IMHO to open the
template itself and work there. I would eliminate any styles you don't want
in the document any more and make sure you have most of what you think will
be needed. There will always be a Normal style, so make sure that your font
in Normal is set to what you want. If your other styles are based on Normal
they ought to match the font. Make sure they do. And I would also set each
style so that it will not update automatically (uncheck the box). This
feature was probably meant for convenience but it usually causes only a lot
of annoyance.

Header: You want a letter header to start on page 2. I did it this way:
First, I got my template in shape. Then I made sure that Page Formatting
/Layout was set for a Different First Page. Then, working in the template,
I added a few paragraphs of nonsense text that would spill over into page 2.
Then I set the page 2 header up. I originally just put a reminder to enter
the date but then I discovered Fields. Now I include a field for the date
(CreateDate), which usually works fine (Hint: Be consistent and use the same
dating for the First Page; that way if you have to change the date on page 1
you know you will have to change it in the headers.) I also put in a spot
to manually insert the name of the letter's addressee. I'm sure some of the
MVPs have a neat way to get it in there automatically, but I don't know how.
Once your header is pretty much the way you want, delete all the garbage
text so you are back to a single page document. Save your template. When
you next open it you have a one page letter. If it gets long enough to go
to page two you will find your header wating for you.

Date: You can put your date wherever you want. You can certainly set the
date to update every time you open any letter you have previously created.
However, most people find this rather confusing. (E.g.: I sent you a letter
June 15th and now I want to send you another copy. However, my letter of
6/15 now has today's date, proving that I never sent you that
letter--right?) If that's what you really want, an easy way is to go to the
spot where you want your date in the template and Insert, date and Time,
select the date format you want and put a checkmark next to Update
Automatically. Hence forth every document created through your template
will have today's date instead of, say, the day you created it or the date
you sent it. If you actually want your documents to reflect the dates they
were created but want the template to give you today's date when you start a
new document, I suggest using a Field for the date. Select Insert, Field,
and pick a field. My guess is that CreateDate might be the most practical.
You must also select the date format you want and put a check mark in the
box to Preserve Formatting during Updates. The date idea actually involves
some compromise. CreateDate gives you the date the document was created;
but if you created the letter yesterday but did not finish revising it until
today, you will have to update it--manually. Life is not perfect. SaveDate
gives you the date it was saved. that might be better except that you will
get the date it was last saved, which might also get confusing--perhaps even
more confusing than always getting today's date in an old document.

Some references that will help you use fields:
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/fields.htm
http://addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#Fields

Using Date Fields-Charles Kenyon
http://addbalance.com/word/datefields1.htm The FAQ page

http://addbalance.com/word/datefields1.htm#PageStart for Dates

Sue Barnhill's MVP paper:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/DateFields.htm


Hope this helps.



"officequestions" wrote in
message ...
I have created a template for my office's letterheads. The letterhead-ing
is
isolated by a continuous page break from the rest of the document. I have
come up with the following problems/questions:

1. The letterhead is set to Gil Sans, but I want to set the default font
for all text that will be typed in the document to be Times New Roman (12
pt); however, even though I have already set the default to Times New
Roman
12 pt font, each time I open the document, it's still set to Gil Sans.
Can
someone please walk me through the process of setting the document's
default
font to be different from the document's letterhead font?
2. Because our documents are oftentimes longer than one page long, I need
to be able to set a header to start on the 2nd page and continue. How do
you
set the header/footer to come up automatically on the second page of a
document once I start to type a document? In our other word documents,
the
header comes up automatically, beginning on the 2nd page, so we don't have
to
manually insert a header each time we start a document.
3. I also need to set the date to show up centered and up to date each
time
I open a document. Our other documents that do not have our letterhead on
them automatically open with the current date centered at the top of the
page.

Thank you and I hope someone can help me with this. I know that this is
all
possible because we have some documents in Word that already contain some
aspects of these.