templation

March 12, 2009 9:39 AM

So, I'm trying to do this little thing in Word 2007 for my boss.

She made a sort-of letterhead, with a graphic in the upper left corner, bits of text all down the left side, and a little blue bar separating this material from the area reserved for text, and a few sentences of small text at the very bottom to the right of the separating bar, which projects about an inch and a half into the page. Basically, she wants to make a template, but when I tried to do this, the graphics and text she wanted didn't lock. Can I select the graphics and the text as a single unit and afix it permanently to the template? Does any of this make sense? Or is everyone comatose from boredom by now? TIA, mefites.

posted by clockzero to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Don't know how this differs in Word 2007 vs 2003 but if I were trying to achieve this I'd probably get the layout saved as a single image and then have it as a watermarked background.

Brand a document with a watermark or background
posted by Ness at 9:49 AM on March 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Put all the letterhead graphics and text inside a Text Box?
posted by Rock Steady at 10:12 AM on March 12, 2009

How are you going about doing this?

Using Word 2002, I did the following:
1) started a new file with a blank template
2) added 2 text boxes from the Drawing toolbar
3) repositioned and resized the text boxes as described
4) drew a vertical blue line separating the left text box form the rest of the page
5) from main menu, Insert/Picture/From file...
6) repositioned and resized picture
7) adjusted left margin to keep main body text to the right of the blue line
8) saved as a Word document (.doc) , just for the hell of it - don't know if that matters
9) resaved as Word template (.dot)
10) opened new file using that .dot template

Can you try that?
posted by buzzv at 10:16 AM on March 12, 2009

In Word, to make a letterhead, you need to go into Edit Header/Footer. Then, you can put what you want in the pre-established locations for header and footer. To add text/graphics elsewhere besides the top and bottom, you add a text box or picture while still in edit header/footer to the desired location. (This is the same process as if you were adding a watermark or background image.)

When you close edit header/footer, your letterhead will be a little greyed out (but it will print fine) and will be inaccessible. To change it, go back to edit header/footer.

You may need to adjust your margins to accomodate the stuff on the left side.

Then save as a Word Template (.dot).
posted by Simon Barclay at 10:27 AM on March 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I would check into using page borders for the text going all down the left side. No time now for giving more details, but mail me later if I can provide more info.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 11:28 AM on March 12, 2009

Thanks, everyone!
posted by clockzero at 4:38 AM on March 16, 2009