Automatically applying page layout settings (Word 2003, Win XP Pro)

[dfarbey]

I have been developing some Word templates. The templates contain styles and page layout settings. From what I have experienced, and what I have read in the online Help, if you apply a template to an existing document only the styles are updated, but the page layout settings are not updated. Am I understanding this correctly?

If so, is there any way to apply page layout settings from a template to an existing document?

Also, is there any way to print out page layout settings?

Thanks very much,

David Farbey
London UK

[jscher2000]

By default, both page setup and styles are frozen at the moment of creation (copied from their source template), and changing templates does nothing. So what can we do?

I don't know how you get document styles to change automatically simply by attaching a different template (I have not yet experienced Office 2003, though). You can copy the second template's style definitions, or any other template's style definitions, to the document using the Organizer. (You can customize your Tools menu with a menu item for the Organizer, or find it in the Macros dialog, and probably other places.) If your style definitions are heavily layered on one another, you might need to do this a few times in sequence to fully override the document's existing style definitions.

For Page Setup, which can differ from section to section, your best approach probably is a macro. Most Page Setup settings can be recorded in the template, using the macro recorder, and saved as a macro there to be played back in any attached document. The only complexity is what should be in the "apply to" box; "this section" seems safest and most flexible. (Trying to go the other way, that is, accessing a template's Page Setup settings from an open document, probably will require the extra step of directly opening the template. Much more work.)

Hope this helps.

[st3333ve]

A handy trick for copying Page Setup settings from one location to another (between sections within a document or between documents), is to first go to the source location, open the Page Setup dialog, and just hit the OK button (without changing anything). Then go to the target location and hit F4 (repeat last command). This will reset the target location's Page Setup settings to match those of the source location.

In Word 2002, anyway...

[Phil Rabichow]

Works in previous versions, also. <img src=/S/smile.gif border=0 alt=smile width=15 height=15>