How to create a template for your business letters<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): First of all, there is a correction to note. In
\nmy article last week on Canon's photo printer BJC-8200, I wrote
\n\"It would be too much of a hassle to replace the print head with
\nthe scanner head and calibrate the printer again and again.\"<\/p>\n
Datascrip, Canon's distributor, sent me a friendly reminder
\nand informed me that, according to their technical support, we
\nneed to do the calibration only once, i.e., when the printer was
\nfirst used. Afterwards, we no longer have to repeat the tedious
\nprocess even though we use the printer for scanning and printing
\nalternately. Both you and Canon deserve an apology from me for my
\nmisleading statement.<\/p>\n
Anyway, this time I would like to leave behind all the techie
\nstuff on enterprise management, ERP, SCM, ASP, photo printers,
\netc., and share some very practical hints with you, especially to
\nthe timid Winword users. Hopefully, after reading this article,
\nyou will no longer have to order expensive preprinted letterheads
\nfor your business from your print shop. You should be able to
\nprint them right from your printer.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that the Internet has enabled a small
\nbusiness to look like a Fortune 1000 company, once in a while a
\nhard copy of your business letter is still needed.<\/p>\n
A business letter needs a letterhead, which shows the
\ncompany's name, address and phone number. Since we are now living
\nin the Internet era, our letterhead would not be complete without
\nour e-mail address. A company logo can also be part of the
\nstandard company letterhead. The accompanying picture shows a
\nsimple letterhead for John Smith.<\/p>\n
You can create a letterhead in Winword and then save it as a
\ndocument template so that you can use it again and again. You can
\ngive it an easily recognizable name such as JS Letterhead, and
\nWinword usually places it in the designated folder for its
\ntemplates. When you want to use it, just create a new document
\nand you will see the new template's icon on the list of available
\ntemplates.<\/p>\n
Header and Footer<\/p>\n
To create the letterhead template, let us start with a blank
\nnew document. Let us first work on the top part of the template,
\nthe actual letterhead. This part is called the Header. To add
\nanything on a page header, we need to make the header accessible.
\nClick on View, and when the menu list appears click on the Header
\nand Footer menu item.<\/p>\n
Start typing the name, address and all other information you
\nwant to appear on the left side of the header. To move to the
\nright side, place the cursor at the end of the text on the left
\nand hit the Tab key twice. That will push the cursor to the far
\nright of the page, and anything you type will appear on the left
\nof the cursor. That's the secret.<\/p>\n
If the text does not go all the way to the right--as shown in
\nthe accompanying picture, you'll have to manually move the Tab
\nstop to the right. It's easy, just place the cursor as shown in
\nthe picture, press and hold the left mouse button and drag it to
\nthe right until it reaches the right margin border.<\/p>\n
To make the header look nicer, you can mix and match the fonts
\nand their sizes. For example, in the illustration I used the bold
\nTimes New Roman for the name and the regular Arial Narrow font
\nfor the rest. The name can have a 10-point size font, while the
\nrest has the 9-point size, for instance.<\/p>\n
Under the last line of text in the header we can also add a
\nstraight horizontal line to mark the border between the header
\nand the body of the letter. To do this, press Ctrl-End first to
\nensure that the cursor is on the bottom of the header, hit Enter
\nonce, then click on Format and then on Borders and Shading.<\/p>\n
Remember that you can choose the thickness of the line and
\neven its color. Then, on the right section of the Borders and
\nShading dialog box, click the icon that shows a line underneath a
\nparagraph of text.<\/p>\n
Now that the header is already constructed, you can click on
\nthe icon in the tool bar that will take you to the bottom part of
\nthe document, which is called the footer. We can include the page
\nnumber in the footer.<\/p>\n
Hit the Tab key just once to place the cursor exactly in the
\ncenter of the page, and then click on the Insert Page Number icon
\nthat you can find on the Header and Footer toolbar.<\/p>\n
You can even create a footer that shows the page number and
\nthe total number of pages in the document. To do this, click on
\nthe Insert Page Number icon, hit the spacebar once and type in
\nof, hit the spacebar again and then click on the Insert Number of
\nPages icon just to the right of the Insert Page Number icon. Your
\nfooter will read \"1 of 1\".<\/p>\n
A final step to complete the letterhead template is to add the
\ndate field. With a field like this on the document template,
\nWinword will automatically add the date to it and use the format
\nthat you've chosen. Hit Enter once to move the cursor one line
\ndown, and click on Insert, and then Field.<\/p>\n
When the Field dialog box appears, click on Date as shown in
\nthe illustration. You can choose a date style from the available
\nlist. Just click on the Options button on the bottom left of the
\ndialog box, and you can make your choice. As shown in the
\nillustration, I chose the MMMM d, yyyy, and this gave me \"June
\n16, 2000\". I didn't have to type it myself.<\/p>\n
The next step is to save the document as the JS Letterhead
\ndocument template. When saving it, click on the arrow on the
\nright end of the Save as type: field and choose Document Template
\nas the format for the document. And, folks, that's really all to
\nit. Easy, isn't it? (zatni@cbn.net.id)<\/p>",
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