Templates let you configure all the relevant settings y'all want pre-applied to documents—font settings, margins and tabs, boilerplate text, and so on. Y'all just open the template and save it under a new name to get a jump start on a new certificate.

If you're a user of the popular, free, and open-source LibreOffice programme suite, odds are decent that y'all're doing and so considering you don't desire to use Microsoft Office. But most of the skills you lot may have learned in Part will translate to LibreOffice, including the basics backside saving template files in the Writer discussion processor. Templates can save you a lot of time if you lot're creating a bunch of documents that share like traits, or if y'all merely want all your new documents configured only the way you like them.

To begin, open LibreOffice Writer as normal and create a new document. You lot tin can arrange that document however you similar, only there are some principal things yous'll want to bank check.

Accept a scan through the "Format" menu first. Fix upwards fonts, character and paragraph formatting, bullets and numbering, and so on.

On the "Format" menu, pay particular attention to the "Folio" option—the tabs in this menu control almost everything that isn't specifically text.

On the "Styles" carte, bank check out the "Styles and Formatting" option. Here, yous can apply any of the preconfigured styles shown in the right-hand window, or make new ones by right-clicking and and so selecting "New." Click the "a," rectangle, folio, and list icons in the acme of the window to change between character, frame, page, and listing styles, respectively. Applying styles helps ensure that you—and anyone with whom y'all share the document—tin go along formatting consistent.

After configuring your settings, go alee and add any boilerplate content y'all want to the document. This could be a course alphabetic character, a tabular array, letterheads or addresses, or anything else you want to evidence up in all documents created from the template.

When you're washed with that, open the "File" menu, and then cull the "Save Equally" control. In the window that appears, click the "Save As Type" dropdown menu, and then select the "ODF Text Document Template (.ott) (*.ott)" pick. That option is specifically if you plan to stay with LibreOffice as your primary editor—if you lot're going to use the template with other processors like Discussion, select "Microsoft Word 97-2003 Template (.dot)(*.dot)."

That'southward it. Whatever time you'd similar to create a new, ofttimes-used document that needs minor changes, just open up up the template file. A good habit to become into is to immediately relieve the bare template every bit a new, standard document (.odt, .doc, or .docx) and so that you lot don't salvage the new information over the template file with a careless Ctrl+Due south.

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