Operation Manual

4) When the package installation is complete, the templates are available for use through File
> New > Templates and the extension is listed in the Extension Manager.
See Chapter 14, Customizing LibreOffice, for more about the Extension Manager.
Setting a default template
If you create a document by choosing File > New > Text Document (or Spreadsheet,
Presentation, or Drawing) from the main menu, LibreOffice creates the document from the default
template for that type of document. You can, however, set a custom template to be the default. You
can reset the default later if you choose.
Note for
Windows
users
You may know that Microsoft Word employs a normal.dot or normal.dotx
file for its default template and how to regenerate it.
LibreOffice does not have a similar default template file; the “factory defaults” are
embedded within the software.
Setting a custom template as the default
You can set any template to be the default, as long as it is in one of the folders displayed in the
Template Manager dialog.
To set a custom template as the default:
1) From the main menu, choose File > New > Template.
2) In the Template Management dialog, open the folder containing the template that you want
to set as the default, then select the template.
3) Click the Set as default icon above the list of templates (see Figure 50).
The next time that you create a document by choosing File > New, the document will be created
from this template.
Although many important settings can be changed in the Tools > Options dialog (see Chapter 2)
for the default template, for example default fonts and page size, more advanced settings (such as
page margins) can only be changed by replacing the default template with a new one.
Resetting the default template
To re-enable LibreOffice’s default template for a document type as the default:
1) In the Template Manager dialog, click the Action Menu icon on the right
2) Point to Reset Default Template on the drop-down menu, and click Text Document (or
other template type).
These choices do not appear unless a custom template has been set as the default, as
described in the previous section.
The next time that you create a document by choosing File > New, the document will be created
from the default template for the document type.
74 | Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0