Using Multiple Word Templates

Let's say you want to distribute your printed documentation using a different look and feel for various materials. You may want your Software documentation to use a different look than your Sales and marketing material, or you may document a number of different products, and want each of them to have their own unique "flavor"...

You can easily achieve this by using different Word templates for each Book. Under the Document tab of your Book Object, you'll see a Word Template field. This defines which template is used when publishing your document. When Author-it publishes your Word output, it uses the Styles and autotext entries (Headers and Footers) that are contained in the Word template – so you can define these differently in each template to create a different "look" for your books.

Remember that if the label of the setting is blue, it means the setting is inherited from the object's template (normally either the Normal Template or User Guide Template) – so it cannot be changed directly.

To change an inherited setting, you need to either:

1. Open the object's template, then make your change there. Author-it will update all objects based on that template.

   -or-

2. Choose a different template (you may need to create a new template),

   -or-

3. Don't base the book on a template - choose (none) from the Based on drop-down list

Let's take an example where I use a logo in my printed Footer. I want this logo to vary from one product to another. Rather than having to create different Media Objects, Topic Templates, and so on... I can easily create two (or more) Word templates and define the autotext entry that is used by my Footer (that contains the logo) differently in each template.