Our department has a set of Word templates for specs, architecture, minutes, etc. We would like to have a consistent look on them, which we do not have today. This is mostly because they were created by different people at different points in time.
I plan to spend some time on giving them similar looks. This is a manual process, but I wonder if something can be done to make it easier to maintain. I would like to be able to change the basic look (e.g. format of front page, header and footer, auto-format for tables) by modifying one "root" template and propagate the change to all other templates automatically.
What is the easiest way to maintain templates of templates in Word?
Best Answer
Templates in word are only good for when a document is created, not to maintain consistency for existing documents. Styles in Word may help, but they still don't do exactly what you are looking to do, but it may help get you further than your current situation.
There isn't much of an automated way to do this (aside from some custom programming), but you could use something like AutoHotKey to automate the repetitive keystrokes.
This is no easy task so my heart goes out to anyone who has to do this with Word docs. If you want to make maintenance easier for a library of content, you'll need to separate the content from the formatting, which is pretty tough with word docs. My suggestion is to think about moving the content out into something more like a web content management system or a wiki.
Hope this helps.