Office: Modifying Microsoft Office Assistant Templates

ID: Q122331

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Office Assistant for Windows, version 1.0
Microsoft Office for Windows, versions 4.2, 4.3
Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows, version 4.0
Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a
Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 5.0, 5.0c
Microsoft Access 2.0

SUMMARY

Microsoft Office Assistant for Windows includes many ready-to-use documents and templates. Many of these documents and templates are read-only. This article describes how to customize the standard information in these documents/templates so that new articles based on these documents/templates will contain your information. For example, you may want to replace a "Company Name" placeholder with your company's name.

MORE INFORMATION

The following information discussed how you can modify the documents and/or templates included with Microsoft Office Assistant.

Microsoft Access

For details about modifying Microsoft Access forms and reports, see the Microsoft Access documentation.

Microsoft Excel Templates

Most of the Microsoft Excel files included with Microsoft Office Assistant are templates, not regular workbooks. After you start Microsoft Excel, you can easily modify these templates.

To open and modify a template, do the following:

On the File menu in Microsoft Excel, click Open.

In the Microsoft Excel directory, select the template name that you want to modify. For example, select Oaincome.xlt.

Press and hold down the SHIFT key, and click the OK button. This will open the template so that it can be edited.

NOTE: If you do not press and hold down the SHIFT key, a copy of the template is opened instead of the actual template file.

Click the Template tab.

Microsoft Excel templates included in Microsoft Office Assistant are protected. To unprotect the worksheet, click Protection on the Tools menu, and then click Unprotect Sheet.

Make any necessary changes, for example change "Company name" to your company's name.

To reprotect the worksheet, click Protection on the Tools menu, and then click Protect Sheet.

On the File menu, click Save.

On the File menu, click Close.

The next time you open a file based on the template OAINCOME.XLT, you will see the changes you made.

Microsoft Excel Workbooks

If the Microsoft Excel file has an .XLS extension instead of a .XLT extension, it is a regular workbook, not a template. For example, in the MSOFFICE\OFFASST directory there is a file called Oabplan.xls. This is a regular Microsoft Excel workbook file. After you start Microsoft Excel version 5.0, you can easily modify these workbooks.

To open and modify the workbook:

To open the workbook file, click Open on the File menu.

On the Tools menu, click Protection, and click Unprotect Sheet. This allows you to make changes to the workbook.

Make any necessary changes. To reprotect the sheet click Protection on the Tools menu, and then click Protect Sheet (passwords are not required here).

On the File menu, click Save or Save As. To leave the original file unaltered, you may want to click Save As and use a different filename.

Microsoft Word Templates

To open a Microsoft Word template, click Open on the File menu.

Change the "List files of type" to Document templates (*.DOT).

Change to the MSOFFICE directory.

Change to the OFFASST directory of MSOFFICE (for example, change to C:\MSOFFICE\OFFASST).

Open one of the templates (that is, Oanewslx.dot).

Make any necessary changes to headers, fonts, and so on.

From the File menu, choose Save.

NOTE: The files that end with .doc can be opened just as any regular Word data files can be opened.

Microsoft PowerPoint Templates

To open Microsoft PowerPoint templates, click Open on the File menu.

Change to the MSOFFICE directory.

Change to the appropriate directory for that template (for example: C:\MSOFFICE\POWERPNT\TEMPLATE\CLROVRHD).

Open one of the templates (that is, Oagraybc.ppt).

Make any changes to the slide master, and so on.

On the File menu, click Save As.

NOTE: The Microsoft PowerPoint templates are read only. If you want to save your changes as a template, you will need to use a different filename.

REFERENCES

Readme file Oareadme.txt located in the MSOFFICE\OFFASST directory.

Additional query words: 5.00c 6.00a


Keywords          : 
Version           : WINDOWS:1.0,2.0,4.0,4.2,4.3,5.0,5.0c,6.0,6.0a
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        :

Last Reviewed: May 7, 1999