[Barbara White]

Hi, everyone,

Our organization just released new (revised) Word templates and I'm
looking for recommendations for how users can convert old documents to
use the new design. (I've got to document these recommendations. When
I've had to do these conversions, it was often a time-consuming thing
and the thoughts of documenting that make me cringe. I'm
wondering--hoping--that there is some shortcut that I'm missing, some
Word magic that I don't know about. :-)

The revisions to the templates affect a wide range of Word elements: new
graphic files have been added (old ones removed); new sections have been
added (old ones deleted); basic page setups for each section have been
redefined, and Styles have been altered (existing Styles have been
modified, new Styles have been added, obsolete Styles have been deleted).

I know that a user can simply attach the new template to an existing
Word file, but this doesn't address all of the issues, at least I don't
think it does.

When I've converted from the old format (a doc using the old template)
to the new format (having that doc use the new template), I've just
opened a copy of the template and then cut/pasted from the old
document--bit by bit--into the new file. Even then, I seem to always
have to manually fix some footers or headers here/there and then tend to
Style issues. But doing it that way at least ensures that section breaks
and associated definitions stay put.

After sitting in on a PowerPoint old-template -- new template
conversion process, it seems that PPT handles this process more easily.
Maybe it's just an illusion, though. Still, after watching that, I
thought I should ask if there is some magic behind or quick method of
getting a Word file to recognize an entirely new template layout. Any ideas?

[Jay Freedman]

Shauna Kelly's article at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/atta...ate/index.html covers most of
your questions. The answer overall is not encouraging.

Because there are many documents involved, it would probably be worth
creating a macro that would automate the cut-and-paste conversion. Because
finished documents are almost never simply "pour this text into this
template", though, I don't think you'll ever be able to do without a final
manual review-and-tweak session.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
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Barbara White wrote:
Hi, everyone,

Our organization just released new (revised) Word templates and I'm
looking for recommendations for how users can convert old documents
to use the new design. (I've got to document these recommendations. When
I've had to do these conversions, it was often a time-consuming thing
and the thoughts of documenting that make me cringe. I'm
wondering--hoping--that there is some shortcut that I'm missing, some
Word magic that I don't know about. :-)

The revisions to the templates affect a wide range of Word elements:
new graphic files have been added (old ones removed); new sections
have been added (old ones deleted); basic page setups for each
section have been redefined, and Styles have been altered (existing
Styles have been modified, new Styles have been added, obsolete
Styles have been deleted).
I know that a user can simply attach the new template to an existing
Word file, but this doesn't address all of the issues, at least I
don't think it does.

When I've converted from the old format (a doc using the old template)
to the new format (having that doc use the new template), I've just
opened a copy of the template and then cut/pasted from the old
document--bit by bit--into the new file. Even then, I seem to always
have to manually fix some footers or headers here/there and then tend
to Style issues. But doing it that way at least ensures that section
breaks and associated definitions stay put.

After sitting in on a PowerPoint old-template -- new template
conversion process, it seems that PPT handles this process more
easily. Maybe it's just an illusion, though. Still, after watching
that, I thought I should ask if there is some magic behind or quick method
of
getting a Word file to recognize an entirely new template layout. Any
ideas?

[Barbara White]

Jay Freedman wrote:
Shauna Kelly's article at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/atta...ate/index.html covers most of
your questions. The answer overall is not encouraging.

Because there are many documents involved, it would probably be worth
creating a macro that would automate the cut-and-paste conversion. Because
finished documents are almost never simply "pour this text into this
template", though, I don't think you'll ever be able to do without a final
manual review-and-tweak session.

I had a feeling that this was the case. I'll read the article. Thanks so
much for the pointer!