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Styles in Letterhead and in Headers and Footers

(Headers and Footers and Letterhead Part II)

In Part I we looked at getting different headers and footers for different pages. In this part we'll take an overview of how to use styles in constructing a good letterhead template. Some of this is based on analysis of the templates that come with Word, some on tips from Woody Leonhard, and a lot on the writings and analysis done by John McGhie in his web article "How to Create a Template - Part II."

Background: Templates

A letterhead template is a document template. This is to distinguish it from a global template or Add-In. Like other document templates, it can be stored anywhere but is most useful if stored in a templates folder because it can be found by the File New dialog or the Letter wizard if stored in a designated templates folder location. There are two designated locations for templates folders in Word, the User Templates folder and the Workgroup Templates folder. These folders can be named anything at all and can contain subsidiary folders to organize your templates. When you initially save something as a template in Word, the default location will be your User Templates folder. For more background on templates, kinds and storage, see Template Basics.

Background: Styles in Microsoft Word

Styles are at the heart of how Word works and if you don't have a firm grasp on how they work, you will be fighting Word every time you use it. In my opinion anyone who designs templates to be used by others should be using only styles for formatting in that template. Using direct formatting (not by creating or modifying styles) should lead to public humiliation, scolding, corporal punishment, up to flogging in the town square for repeat offenders! This is strong language from a criminal defense attorney who believes that there are redeeming qualities in (or at least possible in) any human being.

Hopefully this column will give you some feel for how styles can work for you if you will take the time to learn how they work. Even if you do nothing with letterhead templates, going through the steps to use styles effectively in letterhead will give you a sound grounding in using them well in other kinds of templates and documents.

Background: Letterhead

Letterhead templates can be a great tool for exploring Word features, because they can use so many of them to great advantage. I have spent far too much time trying to design good computer-generated or computer tolerant letterhead. I'm trying to pass on some of the mistakes I've made in doing that on to you so that you can spend your time doing more productive or fun things. So now, let's take a look at what goes into a letter and how styles can be used in a letterhead template to make typing the letter easy.

What goes into a letter? What is the purpose of letterhead?

A letter is a more-or-less formal communication that has expected and optional parts to it. There are various formats for letters that we won't go into here. A letterhead conveys several things. First, it conveys standard information - the name and address - the telephone number(s), perhaps names of contact people, officers, or partners. Second, it conveys an image. Take a look at the letterheads you receive and think about which ones convey which impression. Try to model your letterhead to convey the feeling you want people receiving your letters to have.

This is a matter of personal preference. However, if you use preprinted letterhead, use something that will work with your printer. The themograph raised-ink letterhead melts in laser printers. It can gum up the works and the laser printer flattens the print.

The typed part of the letter will have, at a minimum:

• a date line
• internal address for recipient
• greeting (salutation) line
• body
• close

Optional parts include:

• attention line
• reference line
• reference initials
• copy line
• enclosure line
• continuation page headers/footers

If you take a look at the templates that ship with Word, you'll find that there are different styles associated with these different letter parts. This is an important tip and one of the few good things about those templates. In designing a letterhead, try to use the same style names that Word uses for it's templates because it may make it possible for you to use the letter wizard with your templates if you want to. It will also give you appropriate access to AutoText entries that come with Word. AutoText is style-sensitive.

Styles for the typed portion of a letter:

The styles in a Word template for these parts include:

• Date (followed by Inside Address Name)
• Reference line (followed by Mailing Instructions)
• Mailing Instructions (followed by Inside Address Name)
• Inside Address Name (followed by Inside Address)
• Inside Address
• Attention line (followed by Salutation)
• Salutation (followed by Subject line)
• Subject Line (followed by body text)
• Body Text
• Closing (followed by signature)
• Signature (followed by Signature Job Title)
• Signature Job Title (followed by Signature Company)
• Signature Company (followed by reference initials)
• Reference Initials (followed by Enclosure)
• Enclosure (followed by Cc list)
• CC list

Other key styles in the letterhead include:

• Envelope Address (We'll deal with the envelope styles in a separate article but it is important to keep in mind that they live in the letterhead template.)
• Envelope Return
• Footer
• Header

In this listing I've included the "followed by" styles where they differ from the style itself. Note that they often do differ. This helps automate your letterhead because it automatically imposes the correct style for the next line. Mailing instructions won't appear in your letter unless you call up one of the AutoText entries for that purpose, but if you do, it comes before the Inside Address Name. The Inside Address Name is set up to include space before the paragraph. The Inside Address style does not (so the inside address stays in a block). Every section of the letter that will serve a different purpose has a different style name (even if the formatting of the text in that style is not any different).

I urge you to call up the built-in templates and play with these styles to see how they work. Then take a look at the "click-and-type" fields they've built into the templates.

Click-and-Type Fields

Let me diverge a moment from the discussion of styles to bring up these fields. If click in one, the entire field (which may contain instructions or pointers) is selected. When you type, it disappears and you are left with what you typed. You can use the F11 key to skip to the next field when you are typing. These fields are MacroButton fields and you can make your own by typing them. The "syntax" is:

MacroButton NoMacro Text to appear as prompt.

Note that there are no quotation marks. The upper-and-lower-case typing is a convention to make these easier to read. Microsoft often uses all caps. If you click in one of these fields and press Shift-F9 (toggle field codes) you'll see something very much like this, except that it will have "field delimiter" characters around it.

{ MacroButton NoMacro Text to appear as prompt. }

When the codes are toggled back, what you see is your prompt:

Text to appear as prompt.

This may or may not be shaded on your screen, depending on your view settings, but if you click in it, the entire prompt will be selected. If you want to try typing one of your own, simply type the codewords "MacroButton NoMacro" followed by your short prompt text. (Prompt text is limited to a single line of text as displayed.) Then select everything from "MacroButton" through the end of your prompt. Press Ctrl-F9 and Word will put what you've typed inside the special field delimiters. Press F9 and only your prompt should be showing. Note that you can't just type those delimiters in, even though they look very much like the { } braces characters on your keyboard, they are not the same. Another way to insert them is to use Insert => Field from your menus.

Anyway, these MacroButton fields are how Microsoft makes up for the limitations on the "followed by" setting for styles. It puts the text for certain parts of the letter into the proper style and puts a MacroButton prompt there to make it easy to be typing in the correct style for that letter part. Let's take a look at how we can use those styles in constructing a good continuation header for our letter forms.

Using the StyleRef field in the Continuation Page header

You can use the styles built into your letter template to put the information you type in the second page header of the typed letter without ever entering that header while you are typing! You do this by using a StyleRef field. There are three key items of information that normally appear on the first page of the letter that would be nice in the header. The first is the date, the second is the addressee, and the third is the subject of the letter. You may have noticed that each of these has its own style.

For now, start a letter using one of the built-in templates. Type in a name and address for the addressee. Make sure that the name has a style of "Inside Address Name." Make sure the address is in the style "Inside Address." Type your greeting where it says to do so and press the carriage return. Type a subject like "Re:    Past Due Account." Even though Microsoft's built-in style for this is ALL CAPS, use your Shift key where appropriate, just as if you were typing without all caps. You don't think this letter will go out until next Tuesday, so go up to the date and change the date to when you expect to send the letter. Now let's see how we can have that information automatically inserted into our continuation page header.

Last month we looked at putting a header on the second and subsequent page of a document. Let's access that header now. View => Headers and Footers... If it says "First-page Header," then we need to close the header/footer view, insert a temporary manual page break (Ctrl-Enter) and go back into the header-footer view. You should now have a box like this displayed:

Type "Letter to " and then press Ctrl-F9 to insert our field delimiters and then (between the delimiters) type:

StyleRef "Inside Address Name"

Press F9 to toggle back to the field "result" which should show your addressee's name! Press the Tab key twice to go to the right margin. Type "Page " and insert a field for your page number. You can do this using the header/footer toolbar or you can use Ctrl-F9 and type Page (followed by F9 to update the field). Press your Enter key to end the paragraph and start the next line. Here insert a StyleRef field for the "Subject Line" style except follow the style name with "\* CharFormat". 

{ StyleRef "Subject Line" \* CharFormat }

Press F9 to update. Your subject line should appear, typed in caps and lower-case. Finally, let's put in the field for the date, again using a StyleRef field, this time to the "Date" style. We could use a DATE or a CREATEDATE field for this but doing so makes it more likely that you will send out a letter that has one date on page one and a different date in the headers for your other pages! When you're done, your header should look something like:

If you press Alt-F9 to toggle the display of field codes, what you'll see instead is something like:

Well, that was sure a lot of work to get something that could be typed in a minute! Yes, it was, but the idea is to build it into your letter form templates so that you'll never have to even think about it again. Leave the document open for now and we'll practice on one of the built-in templates again.

Use File => New to call up one of the templates under Letters & Faxes. This time, though, click in the lower right corner of the dialog box to create a new template instead of a document. In this template, click where it says "Dear Sir or Madam:" and then press the End key to get past the MacroButton field. Press the Enter key to get into the subject line style. Type "Re: " Then type in a MacroButton field of your own for the subject line. (The reason for doing this is that if we are going to have a reference to the Subject Line style in the header, the letter must have something in it that uses that style, at least when the letter is finished. The template doesn't have to have anything there, but the error message that will show up can be distressing if you don't understand what is going on.)

Next get into the header/footer and copy our header from the document we were just working on into the Header for our new template. It will probably look something like this when pasted into the new template:

Then  use File => New and test out your letter template. It should be under the tab for Letters and Faxes. Type in an addressee name and a subject. Then, in the body portion, press Ctrl-Enter to force a new page. Use Print Preview to take a look at your continuation page header.

Play with this. You now have the tools to create a decent letterhead template. I suspect that this is enough for your brains, for now. In Part III (which may be next month) we'll take a closer look at the header and footer toolbar and its AutoText component. Again, here is here is some supplemental reading for extra credit.

How to Control Page Numbering in a Word Document (don't use Insert Page Number!)

Using Date Fields in Microsoft Word (don't use Insert Date!)

Letterhead Textboxes and Styles Tutorial - preprinted letterhead formatting and more

Letterhead System for Microsoft Word (Letter forms that can be easily updated)

Much more on headers and footers - Microsoft Word Intermediate Users' Guide Chapter on Sections, Section Breaks, and Headers and Footers

More on fields and field codes.

Chas Kenyon is a trial lawyer concentrating in criminal defense with a long interest (obsession?) with making word processing work well in the law office.  Visit his home page