This article is suitable for those who:

  • Wish to add a logo or images to their specifications.
  • Include prewritten text.
  • Have greater control over the document format.


Should you wish to only apply minor changes to the overall look of your specification, please see Creating A Microsoft Word Template - Basic.


This article will guide you through creating a template stylesheet in Microsoft Word, extracting information from the exported Lattira Spec and NBS Chorus specification, and importing it into the template. It also covers various Microsoft Word options, including some advanced formatting choices you might find useful.


Please note - This guide was written using Word 2013, some of the options may be in different locations depending on the version of Word you are using.


This document will guide you through:

  • Adding headers and footers.
  • Inserting A Logo.
  • Adding a Table of Contents.
  • Preparing your NBS Specification.
  • Importing your specification into the template.


You can download a copy of the 'Default Specification template' file attached at the bottom of this article to use as the basis for your company's template stylesheet, then follow on from the 'Applying the template' section of this article to help you get started. Alternatively, you can follow the below steps to start your own template in Microsoft Word.


Creating the Template Stylesheet In Microsoft Word


1. Adding Header and Footers

If you would like to show headers and footers, select the Insert tab and then either Header or Footer.




You can insert either manually-typed text that will remain the same across each page and each document (such as company name) or, insert auto-text which will auto-generate items such as page numbers and dates etc. This can also be used to insert company logos in the header. To insert the auto-text, select the Design tab under Header & Footer Tools and select from the options in the Insert section.


 

2. Formatting the Cover Page

Now the headers and footers have been inserted, you should now insert any text you wish to see on your cover page and insert place holders for any variable text (i.e specification name etc). Here is an example: 



Once you are happy with the look of your cover page you, will need to insert a page break - you can do this by selecting Insert Then Page Break.



N.B. To view breaks, select the Home tab and click the show/hide markers icon.



3. Adding a Table of Content

To insert a table of contents into your template, select the References tab then Table Of contents. You can then select the Table Of Contents style you wish to use or create your own custom style.



N.B. This will place a blank Table of Contents in your document which can then be updated once the specification information is inserted.


4. Finalising The Template

After the Table of Contents is inserted, add another page break to take you onto page 3. On this page, you can insert a text place holder such as [Insert Specification Text Here]. You can then add in any extras you wish to use in this document and should end up with something similar to this:



Once you are happy with the template, you can now save the document in a location of your choosing as a .docx file.

 

Applying the template


1. Preparing the exported specification

First, export your specification to Microsoft Word. Open the specification and display page breaks by selecting Home and then the show/hide markers icon.



Place your cursor next to the heading of the first system in the file, then drag the cursor to the top of the document and press the backspace button until the previous pages are removed from the specification.



Once the cover and contents pages have been removed, you will then need to remove the headers and footers from this document (unless you wish to use these). To do this select the Insert Button, click the Header or Footer dropdown and click Remove Header or Footer.



Once this has all been removed, save your specification and open the template document created earlier.


2. Inserting the Specification Into Your Template

In the template document, select the placeholder text.

 


Select Insert > Object > Text from File.



When the file explorer window appears, browse to your saved specification and insert it - this will bring in all the text from that file however, it will not apply the text formatting of your template.


3. Updating The Table Of Contents

Now the content is within the template document, you will need to update the Table Of Contents to show the page numbers and section. To do this browse to the Table Of Contents, click on the drop-down and select the Update Table option.



You should now select File and Save As to save this as a new document (i.e. the Specification name) and not overwrite the template document.


N.B. Your original exported Spec file will still be available in your original download location - you may want to consider archiving this to avoid duplication.