Operation Manual

Figure 55: Resetting the default template for text documents
Associating a document with a different template
At times you might want to associate a document with a different template, or perhaps you are
working with a document that did not start from a template.
One of the major advantages of using templates is the ease of updating styles in more than one
document, as described on page 72. If you update styles by loading a new set of styles from a
different template (as described on page 66), the document has no association with the template
from which the styles were loaded—so you cannot use this method. What you need to do is
associate the document with the different template.
Note
In LibreOffice 3.x, you could use the Template Changer extension to simplify this
process. Unfortunately, this extension does not work in LibreOffice 4.0.
For best results, the names of styles should be the same in the existing document and the new
template. If they are not, you will need to use Edit > Find & Replace to replace old styles with new
ones. See Chapter 4, Getting Started with Writer, for more about replacing styles using Find &
Replace.
1) Use File > New > Templates. In the Template Manager dialog, double-click the template
you want to use. A new document opens, containing any text or graphics that were in the
template. Delete any unwanted text or graphics from this new document.
2) Open the document you want to change. (It opens in a new window.) Press Ctrl+A to select
everything in the document. Click in the blank document created in step 1. Press Ctrl+V to
paste the content from the old document into the new one.
3) Update the table of contents, if there is one. Use Save As to save this file with the name of
the file from which content was taken. Close the old file without saving.
Organizing templates
LibreOffice can only use templates that are in LibreOffice template folders. You can create new
LibreOffice template folders and use them to organize your templates. For example, you might
have one template folder for report templates and another for letter templates. You can also import
and export templates.
Chapter 3 Using Styles and Templates | 75