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Create a Template in Microsoft Word

A template is a form in which the person entering the information is only allowed to manipulate areas that you allow. For instance, the student can type in their name, and the answers to a question, but not edit other text on the page such as a grading rubric.

Some good uses for templates:

• To limit the length of an essay response.
• To save time for your students by allowing them to choose responses from a drop-down box.
• To receive the information you desire in a clean, formatted, consistent manner from every respondent.

To create a Word Template, open Microsoft Word and follow these instructions.

1. You need to create a form, and in order to add form fields, you must have the Forms toolbar available. To view any toolbar, click on the View menu and go down to the Toolbars menu, slide over and select the menu you want to view, in this case Forms.

By selecting a menu there will be a check mark next to it if it is currently open and visible in Word. So, if there is already a check mark next to Forms, then it is already open, you just have to find it. The Forms toolbar looks like this:

Note: The toolbar may be docked, or connected to the typical toolbars that you see in Word, or it might be floating around in the workspace.

2. Type your text into Word, and add form fields where necessary. There are three basic options, a text form field, a drop-down form field, and a check box form field.

To add a text form field:

A text form field is used when you want to allow the user to type in text, as in their name, a paragraph answer to a question, or any other text.

For example, if you want to make a space for your students to enter their names, type Name and then click on the text form field - - on the Forms toolbar. A gray area will show up where your cursor was when you clicked on this button. If you double click on this gray area, the Text Form Field Options window will pop up allowing you to customize the field. The top four fields will be the ones you are most interested in and are explained more below.

• The Type field allows you to choose whether the text entered is regular text, a number, a date, or another specifically formatted type of text.
• The Default text field is where you type in text that will appear in the gray area, giving instruction to the person filling out the template; in this example if you were making a name field you might type in 'enter your name here'.
• The Maximum length field is used if you want to limit how many characters can be entered in the field you are creating. Keep in mind that a space is considered a character.
• The Text format field allows you to specify how you want the text to look after it is entered, you can leave this field blank and the text will appear how it is typed. However, if you choose, Uppercase then no matter what the user types in, the text will appear in uppercase. The other options are lowercase, first capital and title case.

So, if I typed Name and then created a text field next to it for user to type in their name, and set up the default text to read 'enter your name here', and the text format field to first capital, the result in Word would look as follows:

To add a drop-down form field:

A drop-down form field is used when you want the user to choose something from a list. For example, if your template was asking for an address, you could use drop-down form field for the state and have the user choose their state instead of having to type it in.

When your cursor is at the right place to enter the drop-down field, then click on the drop-down form field button - - from the Forms toolbar and a gray area will appear. Double-click on this gray box, and the Drop-Down Form Field Options box will pop up allowing you to customize the field. The top two fields will be the ones you are most interested in and are explained more below.

• The Drop-down item field is where you type in a choice that you want to have appear in your drop-down list. After you enter text in this field, the Add button will become available and you can click on it to add it to your drop-down list which appear on the right.
• Once you have items listed in the drop-down list field the Remove button will become available and if you want to delete an item you typed in, just highlight it and click Remove.
  • You are also able to move items around using the Move arrows to the right of the drop-down list. Just highlight the item you want to move and click up or down until it is in the right order.

For example, if I added a field called major for my students to choose from a list of majors, my Drop-down Form Field Options box would look like this:

And in my Word document it would look like this:

It does not appear to be any different from the text field right now. But when your template is active, when the user clicks on the gray box with statistics a drop-down arrow will appear and a menu will drop down as shown below.

To add a check box form field:

A check box form field would be used if you are going to list a number of choices and you want the user to select the choices that apply to them by checking the appropriate boxes.

1. Next to one choice, click on the check box form field button - - from the Forms toolbar and a gray area with a black box inside of it will appear. Double-click on this gray box, and the Check Box Form Field Options box will pop up allowing you to customize the field. You will typically be able to just leave the default options with this form field.

Continue this for any remaining choices you want to list with check boxes. Below is an example of what would show up in Word if you added three check boxes, one for each sport; hockey, football, and soccer, and left the options on default.

3. Once your form is completed; there are form fields wherever you are expecting a response from the user, and the options for each field are set-up, then you need to protect this form. Click on the Tools Menu at the top of Word, and go down to Protect Document...

The following little window will pop up.

You want to make sure that you choose Forms if it is not chosen already. Then, enter a password into the password field. If you do not enter a password, the user does have the ability to unprotect the document and manipulate the protected areas. However, if you password the template, then only you can unlock the document and make changes. Be sure to choose something that you will remember because there is no way to retrieve this password or unlock your document without it.

Click on OK.

4. To finish, just save the document as a Template. Click on the File Menu, and choose Save As...

Click on the drop-down arrow next to the Save as type field and select Document Template. Your computer will now probably automatically take you to where the MS Word Templates are stored, you can save it in that folder, or choose a different one. Type in the File Name and click on Save.

Note: The file type will not be a .doc, but a .dot.

5. Send or distribute this template as you wish. The user must have MS Word to be able to open and enter text into the template.

6. To Unlock or Unprotect a document click on the lock button on the Forms Toolbar - . A small box will pop up asking for the password you put in when you locked the document, enter the password and click OK and you should be able to freely change the document.