Using and Customizing Templates in OpenOffice.org - Page 2

Installing the Templates in OpenOffice.org

Once you've got the WorldLabel templates, you should add them to the template repository and tell OpenOffice.org where they are. Strictly speaking, you don't have to do any of this, since you can simply choose File > Open and find the template file. However, OpenOffice.org has a specific way to organize templates which is easier to use once you've got it set up.

This applies to any template that you download, as well as any template that you create.

There are several ways to do this; I'll show you three.

Copying

Copy your templates to the appropriate directory. The directory is <OpenOffice>\share\template\language

Just paste your directory of templates into that location.

Importing a single template

That other way was so easy, why bother with anything else? Good question. This approach is good if you want to just bring in a particular template and maybe put it in another category like “templates for the month-end reports.”

1. Choose File > Templates > Organize.

2. Select a category on the left. (If you need to create one, right-click on an existing category, choose New, and immediately type the name of the new category.)

3. Right-click on the category and choose Import Template.

4. Find the template and click Open.

5. The template will appear in the category.

Pointing to a Directory of Templates Locally or on the Network

Why would you need yet a third way to point OpenOffice.org at your templates? If you're a system administrator, you want to make things easy on yourself. Therefore you might want to put all the templates on the network and just point each user to them. Here's how.

1. Put the directory of templates on the server.

2. Important: Create at least one subdirectory and put the templates there. It's odd, but OpenOffice.org recognizes the subdirectories when you do it this way, but not the main directory. You'd have something like this:

3. Choose Tools > Options.

4. Go to OpenOffice.org > Paths and select the Templates line.

5. Click Edit. In the window that appears, click Add. Specify the path on the network. Note that you can have several paths to templates.

6. Click OK, then click OK twice more to save changes and close the window.

Note: There's another way to add a template to the repository, but it's more useful when it's a template you create yourself, or create based on one of the wizard templates. I'll talk about that approach later.