Word - Template Configuration

Color Theme

The color scheme of your organization is built into your Word template. You can change the text and background color.

The first row (1) is the Color Theme in the template.

Accent Color 1-6 are default colors for Chart, Table, and SmartArt. For this reason, it is crucial to define these colors as corporate but also as accessibility-oriented colors.

Tables, charts, and SmartArt use text color from the Background 1 and Text 1 color position. The order of the accent colors 1-6 generates the rest of the chart color.

Color Background 2 and Text 2 can work as extra colors. Additionally, it is possible to preset two colors for Hyperlinks.

Custom Colors (3) can hold up to 50 extra colors specific to your brand, in the order you want and with the naming you prefer.

Gradients (2) and Standard Colors (4) are generated by Word and not your brand colors. These can unfortunately not be hidden.

Why is this our best practice?

Tables, charts, and SmartArt use the text color “Text 1”.

Tables, charts, and SmartArt use the six accent colors. Especially Charts, as they use them in order 1-6. Therefore, we advise that those colors have noticeable different contrasts to be accessible and to allow for grayscale printing.

The main elements use eight colors out of the ten defined and are visible in Theme colors. Additionally, a preset of two hyperlink colors is possible. These two colors are not accessible in the color themes view.

Font Theme

When building a font theme, the Headings and Body font are defined.

If you copy text from another documents, you can apply the Theme Font to that text.

• Go to the Home tab in the Ribbon, find Font (1)
  
• Click on the font type and choose if it is a Heading or a Body text (2)

It is also possible to use a brand font and embed this into your template, though testing will be required to ensure the custom font functions and displays as intended.

The font must have TrueType outlines. The easiest explanation is that the font should be a .ttf file. If the font does not have TrueType outlines, you must contact the font developer/agency and ask for this.

Also check if the font has a tick in ‘install mode’ or ‘editable’, as these are prerequisites to be embedded at all. This setting typically requires ownership of the font, as it can then be used freely in all the templates. The font developer also takes care of this setting.  

To be applied on word documents the Custom Font must be installed on the user's computer.

Why is this our best practice?

Tables, charts, and SmartArt will automatically use the (Body) font.

Styles

The styles are established based on the received design and are an important part of creating your branded template. The Normal style is set as default and typically the following styles are defined in terms of size, color and type:

• Normal
• No Spacing
• Headings (typically Heading 1 and 2, but we can establish up to 9 levels)
• List bullet
• List Number (typically design for 1 – 3, though all 9 levels are defined)
• Table (typically Heading, Numbers, Numbers Total, Text, and Text Total)
• Document Heading
• Document Name
• Caption
• Footnote Text
• TOC Heading

However, many more can be created, depending on the template type, functionality and company needs.

Why is this our best practice?

Normal style is used instead of Body Text because it is the standard style for text in Word. When clearing all formatting on a paragraph, Word will always apply the Normal style.

Using styles ensures support of built-in Word functionality e.g. TOCs and makes it easier to perform brand updates at a later point.

Table Styles

When the design includes tables, we build table style in your template. If you decide to use Table Styles, you can format your table all at once, and even see a preview of what your table will look like formatted in a particular style before you apply the style on your table.

If specified in the design, we make a special design for the following options, which are not set by standard: Header row, first column, banded rows, total row, last column, banded columns.

Spelling language

We create the template with the appropriate Spelling language.

The spelling language in Word refers to the specific language used for spell checking and grammar checking within the document. It helps ensure that the text in your document is checked for spelling errors and grammatical mistakes according to the rules of the chosen language.

Layout

To ensure the right visual output and the most user-friendly template, we set correct page setup (paper size, margins, and alignments).

Format – if the primary purpose of the document is printing, we typically set template as A4 or US letter format but it can be set to any size required.

Margins – margins are used as a frame for all content in the body of the document. Iside of the margins can be inserted logo, page number or office/document information.

Different first page – Most often it is a good idea to use different first page when creating correspondence templates. The exception from this is when the first page and the following pages are completely alike (this includes the logo, page number, margins etc.).

Frontpage and backpage – different sections can be created in the document. specific design is created typically for report templates.

Table of contents – We create TOC using the Custom Table of Contents to be fully compliant with the design.

Page numbering

In order to use the correct way of formatting page numbering according to the character of the document. Page numbers can be continuous though a document, all but the first page, or start over in each section.

Date

A date format is always set to ensure correct formatting for your location, or a dynamic variant if Templafy or Omnidocs Productivity Tools are included. Often the date picker is used, allowing the user to select and alter the date on the document.

Additional configuration

Format

By default set to A4 but can be set to any size required. If printing of the documents is an important requirement, additional considerations may be needed, and the size and format should be discussed further.

Built-in functionality

The right formatting is applied to ensure that the users can work with built-in functionality in Word such as:

• Captions which can be added to e.g.: tables, pictures, Icons, shapes, charts, etc.
• Cross referencing between e.g. text and image
• Style referencing e.g. document title in headers

Accessibility

If you have Omnidocs Accessibility Assistant, we make sure that all templates are accessible. It means e.g. that all the document is read out loud in the right order, all styles have correct outline levels, a description is added to the relevant shapes and tables.

Macros

Macros can be used for built-in buttons for list bullets and numbering.