[Originally published 2000.]
We will take a slight detour from the main path of the series on collaboration to take a look at a new Template Gallery on Microsoft’s web site http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/TemplateGallery. Microsoft has organized a collection of Word templates and introduces it this way:
“For those times when you know what you need but don’t want to start from scratch, we’ve created the Template Gallery. We’ve partnered with content experts to provide you with hundreds of useful templates to get your work done. We already have hundreds of templates: resumes, cover letters, sales and marketing documents, collection letters, legal documents, complaint letters, and much more. And, we’re just getting started. We are working with a growing set of partners to provide additional templates based on suggestions from our customers like you.”
Since I first opened Word, I have admired the templates shipped with the program. They are attractive, and their formatting is a model for Word use. In fact, they were a significant source for the Laws of Styles stated in the first Word of Law column. Take, for instance, the Letter templates, Professional Letter, Contemporary Letter and Elegant Letter. The key elements each have their own aptly and consistently named styles: Company Name, Date, Salutation, Body Text, Closing and Signature. A letter created with one of the templates can be transformed to the formatting of one of the others in one step through the Style Gallery. I can create no better demonstration of the use or benefit of observing the Laws of Styles.
The templates presented so far in the online Template Gallery utterly fail to meet these standards of excellence in formatting. Nearly all of the documents are formatted entirely in Normal Style. I did find one use of Heading 1 in the Business Card template under the heading “Stationary, Labels and Cards.” Space between paragraphs is created by empty paragraphs throughout the set. Even the more complex legal documents suffer from these and other undesirable formats, such as partial use of automatic numbering.
This is not the place to consider the quality of content of these templates. Most users of templates such as those presented in the Template Gallery, especially those in legal practice, would modify the content of a template prepared elsewhere for the particular needs of their organization or to follow their professional judgment.
A somewhat more minor criticism of the Template Gallery is that the “Edit in Microsoft Word” command on the template preview screen opens a new instance of Word each time it is used. The command itself is a javascript command.
We can only hope that the design wisdom and quality control applied to the templates that ship with Word can be brought to future contributions to the Template Gallery.
This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.