Word templates
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OK, so it's not exactly coding, but bear with me.
There are 5 or 6 people in my fangroup who may want to send letters on behalf of the group. Therefore, it would behoove us to have a template that will embed the group's logo and information, like a letterhead or whatever. But we'll each want our own names and positions and whatnot on it, plus the date and all that.
I made a Word template, but when I sent it to the others, they reported seeing my name on it in the "Author" field. Am I using the wrong field? Are fields not meant to work this way? Do I need to somehow scrub my information out of it before I send it out? I've seen templates that, when downloaded, my name gets populated into... how do I do this?
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I think you just need to have them change the author. On the File tab, under info, it shows up on the right under related people, and it can be changed.
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I've never done this in word, but the fields may not be automatically updated when you open the template file as a normal document. If you save it as a template, in the appropriate location, then create a new document based on that template, it may properly update. This would also have the side effect of it not being possible to accidentally overwrite the template when saving, as it's a new document as far as word is concerned.
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I did save it as a template in the template location, but I then sent it to others.
Assume the others are idiots.
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Saved as
.dot
rather than.doc
? Stupid question, but one worth aksing
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dotx, yes.
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This.
There's a difference between opening the template, and creating a new document from it. The latter shows the current person as the author because that's the person who created the document.
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How can I idiot-proof the template so they can figure it out?
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My first guess is: Maybe if you removed your name as author from the template word would look for their name instead.
Second guess: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Save-a-Word-document-as-a-template-1a20aa19-5ca4-4b40-bdf2-57a2168c1e89?CorrelationId=47700f6e-b523-4110-b661-60373ad7d8ec&ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US mentions something about a ‘developer tab’, which sounds like it could possibly have something useful.
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You can't AFAIK idiot proof the template, you'll need to give them instructions or let them Do It Wrong™ and tell them to fix the author.
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Can you send the template over Office 365? Presumably if Word grabbed it from there, it would save it locally in the correct location. I know it has something called "template gallery" or something. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a current version of Office to check. (For some reason, this company uses Office 2010.)
That still doesn't prevent people from manually opening the template instead of creating a new document from the template.
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I can certainly find out once I talk to people again to find out what version they have >.>
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FWIW, even double clicking on the dotx file will make a new document. The only way to get Word to actually "open" the template is through the File->Open dialog (At least, that's how I remember it working last time I used Word templates)
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That was my understanding as well. Now that I'm back on a PC, I found the "clean up for sharing" button which hopefully removes the Author...
It also says my document might not be accessible because..... the images don't have alt tags. In a document intended for printing, in the header. JFC.
OK, I might have this down now. I had to re-insert all the bits with my name in it, this time using the "Author" document property under Quick Parts, but I think it's okay now. Sending to someone to verify...