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2019.01.31

APPLYING A NEW TEMPLATE TO AN

EXISTING DOCUMENT

COURTESY OF THE PHARMASUG 2019 ACADEMIC TEAM

APPLYING A NEW TEMPLATE TO AN EXISTING DOCUMENT

MICROSOFT WORD WALKTHROUGH

1. Open the Word document you would like to apply the template to, then click File > Options to
open the Word Options dialog box.

2. In the Word Options dialog box, (1) click Add-ins in the left bar, (2) select Templates from the
Manage drop down list, and (3) click Go.

3. A new dialog box should appear for Templates and Add-ins. Check the “Automatically update
document” styles option and click the Attach button.

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 4. A new dialog box should appear for Attach Template. In this new box, (1) open the folder
containing the new template to be applied, (2) select the new template, and (3) click the Open
button.

5. Click the OK button when it returns to the Templates and Add-ins dialog box. The specified Word
template should now be applied to the existing Word document.

MICROSOFT POWERPOINT WALKTHROUGH

1. Open the PowerPoint document you would like to apply the template to, then click the Design
tab and choose the button in the Themes section.

2. A new box should appear. Click the “Browse for Themes” option at the bottom of the box.

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 3. A new dialog box should appear. In this new box, (1) open the folder containing the new
template to be applied, (2) select the new template, and (3) click the Apply button.

4. The specified PowerPoint template should now be applied to the existing PowerPoint document.

5. In some instances, portions of the existing theme may be carried over. To ensure the slide is
using a layout from the new template, you can (1) select the desired slide and right click, (2)
select Layout, (3) select the desired Layout from the new window. Note that all possible layouts
will be included even the ones from the existing theme. So be sure to select the one that
corresponds to the new theme. When first opening the Layout window the current layout will
be selected.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES
For both the word document and the presentation, minor adjustments may need to be accounted for
when converting to a new template. Some things to pay careful attention to are:
1. If you had put anything into the original document by hand (e.g., another conference logo, your
company logo, page numbers, headers, footers, etc.), then those will still appear in the new
template. You will need to check for and delete these items if they are inappropriate additions to
the new template. If you wish to keep these items in the new template, you will need to check
for their placement to make sure that they had transferred appropriately.
2. It is always a good idea to check spacing once you have applied your conversion. We want to
make sure that your paper is neat and clean with fitted lines and paragraphs. Whenever
performing a conversion, some unavoidable adjustments may be made, so it is always worth an
additional check.
3. Be sure to check font coloring if the existing and new templates differ in their color schemes.
Some font coloring may still carry over (or accidently change), so you want to make sure that the
coloring matches the template and/or your personal choices within the document.
This is not an exhaustive list of things to look for when reviewing the conversion. In general, once you
have converted the existing document to the new template, it is a good idea to go through the
documents to ensure that miscellaneous information is not carried over and that the converted
document is easy to read with now major issues.

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The intent is not that there will be a 100% conversion of all aspects. But the approach described above
will convert a good portion of the material to the new template and save a lot of copying and pasting
from the existing template to the new template.

REFERENCES
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/load-and-apply-a-personal-template-71262c90-1447-4109-
90f3-eb84f9d06c98
http://www.readysetpresent.com/powerpointtemplateguide.htm

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