Working with Microsoft Word templates

All Microsoft Word documents are based on templates. Templates apply to an entire document and determine its basic structure, including the default page size and orientation, margins, styles, and page headers and footers (not to be confused with table headers and footers). Templates can also include logos and standard text that are to be included in the document before or after the tables, etc. Templates help you standardize designs and can save you time, because they enable you to create a formatting scheme and apply it to multiple exports.

There are two basic types of templates in Word: global templates and document templates. Global templates are available to all documents, whereas a document template contains settings that are available only to documents that are based on, or attached to, it. UNICOM Intelligence Reporter - Survey Tabulation uses a document template to format the exported tables.

When you export your tables, the Word document is formatted using a built-in template called WordTemplate.dot, unless you specify a different template. The first time you run an export to a new location using the built-in template, the export saves the default WordTemplate.dot template in the output folder. If you do not specify a destination folder and you are using the built-in template, the template is written to the default Word templates folder, if not already present there. When you subsequently export to the same location, the template is not overwritten. This means that you can make changes to the template and your changes will be preserved the next time you export to the same location.

Alternatively, you can save your template in another location, such as the main Office templates folder, and explicitly select the template when you run an export. Typically you would first run an export using the built-in template to get a copy of the default WordTemplate.dot template and then use this as a starting point for creating your own templates.

You can subsequently change the template that is attached to a document by using the Templates and Add-Ins option on the Word Tools menu. When you attach a template, select Automatically update document styles in the Word Templates and Add-Ins dialog box. This updates all of the styles in the document with the styles in the template. Note that changing the template in this way does not change the position of the various items or the page layout of the document (for example, the margin settings and the page headers and footers are not changed).

▪Bookmarks. These define the position of the tables, survey name and description, and table of contents. For example, you can specify that the table of contents is to appear after the tables by positioning the bookmarks appropriately.

▪Styles. Each part of the table is mapped to its own style in Word. You can change the appearance of the various parts of the table by changing the styles. For a complete list of the default styles, see The default Microsoft Word export styles. The default styles have been designed to enable you to easily customize the formatting of the elements that are found in most common tables. If you find the default styles do not provide the level of control you need, you can define new styles. Provided the new style names follow the Word Export's style naming rules, the new styles will be used next time you run the export using the new or amended template. This section provides information on how to do this.

Table headers and footers are positioned around the tables to which they relate (not in Word page headers and footers) and are not exported when you select the option to export charts only.