Word templates

Hello Nina,

Thank you for your question. When you make changes to a template, only documents created afterwards will show the changes. This is because documents created from templates are not linked to those templates and so they don't automatically show changes made to the template afterwards.

You would have to go and apply the new template manually to the old documents as follows:

1. Display the Developer tab of the ribbon and then click on the Document Template tool. Word displays the Templates and Add-Ins dialog box.
2.Click on the Attach button. Word displays the Attach Template dialog box, which looks very much like a standard Open dialog box.
3. Use the controls in the dialog box to locate and select the template you want attached to your document.
4. Click on Open. The Attach Template dialog box disappears and the name of the template you selected appears in the Document Template box.
5. Select the "Automatically Update Document Styles" check box to make sure that the styles in the template are applied to your document.
(Keep the styles the same if you don't want to change the documents' styles)
6. Click on OK.

If you don't see the Developer tab necessary for step 1, then you need to make the tab visible. You do that by clicking the Office button and then clicking the Word Options button. In the resulting Word Options dialog box, the Popular option should be selected at the left. Make sure the Show Developer Tab in Ribbon check box is selected and click OK.

I hope this answers your question.

Kind regards
Marius Barnard
Microsoft Trainer