Part 3: Designing Pages for Maximum Visual Impact in Visual C#.NET

Painting PDF417 in Visual C#.NET Part 3: Designing Pages for Maximum Visual Impact

Microsoft Office Word 2003 Inside Out XML document. If you have another XML schema that you d like to attach to a document, you can do so in much the same way that you attach a template to a document. In this chapter, you ll learn how to add, use, and control templates, wizards, add-ins, and XML schemas to enhance and automate document creation, editing, and formatting.

As mentioned, every Word document is based on a template. A template is a .dot file (or group of related files) that contains the structure and tools for shaping the style and page layout of finished files. Templates can contain settings for fonts, styles, page layout parameters, toolbars, macros, AutoText entries, key assignments, menus, headers, footers, and special formatting. By default, Word bases new blank documents on the Normal template (discussed in more detail in Getting the Scoop on Word s Normal Template, on page 487). The main purpose of templates is to make formatting and inserting information into docu ments as efficient, error-free, and automatic as possible. The fewer formatting and typing tasks you have to perform, the better. In addition to speeding document creation, templates enable you to provide custom editing environments for particular projects and clients because templates can include interface tools (such as toolbars, macros, and menus) as well as formatting and layout settings. To clarify, templates can assist in document creation tasks in the following ways:

As described in 9, Using Styles to Increase Your Formatting Power, you can create and use a series of styles to generate a particular look for a document. By creating a template that contains a set of styles, you can easily access and consistently apply the styles throughout similar and related documents.

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Templates can save you from repeatedly typing information that recurs in related doc uments by enabling you to create new documents that automatically contain default text, include relevant custom AutoText entries (such as company names and contract text), and display placeholder text. For more information about AutoText entries, see 7, Putting Text Tools to Work, and for more information about adding head ers and footers, see 15, Mastering Page Setup and Pagination.

If a particular type of docu ment always uses specific Word tools, you can create a template that displays a Word interface that caters to the tasks associated with the document type. To learn about cus tomizing toolbars and menus, see 5, Customizing Word and Enhancing Accessibility. To help streamline tasks in certain types of documents, you can include macros in a template. Macros are routines that are created to perform a task or set of tasks, and are assigned to a toolbar button or keyboard shortcut. For more information about macros, see 32, Creating and Working with VBA Macros.

Formatting Documents Using Templates, Wizards, Add-Ins, and XML Schemas Regardless of the information included in templates, you can use two main types of templates when you work in Word: global templates and document templates. Global templates (most notably the Normal template) contain settings that are available to all documents. In contrast, document templates, such as memo and Web page templates, contain settings that are available only to documents based on that template. When a document is based on a template, the tem plate is attached to the document. (For more information about attaching templates, see Attaching Templates to Documents, on page 499.) If this difference between global and document templates seems a little cloudy at the moment, don t despair. After you review the information in this chapter and experiment with templates for a while, you ll see the value of knowing how to use and customize global and document templates as you work.