Should I make a template for weekly bulletin

[Guest]

I currently do a weekly bulletin for our church. I would like to know if I
should make a template or just use the last week's copy and edit it? There is
sections of text that stays the same every week, there is some text that is
slightly edited, and other text is completely deleted and replaced with new
text. I have read that not using a template and constantly editing a old
document can cause problems and I think I've already come across some of
them. But, if using the old document is the better way, how can I educate
myself on how to do it correctly. TIA

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Best practice is to create a template, and it certainly won't hurt to do
that, if only as a convenient place to store AutoText entries that are used
just for the bulletin, keyboard shortcuts you use just for it, etc. You'll
also want to create the styles you need and store them in the template.

That said, in a similar situation (Rotary bulletin), although I have a
template, I do use Save As and base each week's bulletin on the previous
one, for the exact same reason: text that changes gradually. A template is
great for static text (and you can certainly put all of that in your
template, so that it will be available if you occasionally want to "refresh"
the document by starting from scratch), but for text that is only partially
updated week to week (in our case it's the list of upcoming programs and
other calendar-type entries, ongoing reminders, etc.), it would be a great
waste of time to retype text week after week, yet it's too ephemeral to save
as an AutoText entry.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Guest]

You are certainly going to benefit from using a template initially and you
are right constantly reusing an old document will eventually corrupt it. You
can reduce the chance of corruption by using a template each time you create
a new bulletin... however this probably isn't going to be practical for you.
I would recommend using a template initially and using the "save as" for a
limited time, for example with your weekly bulletin you could repurpose it
using save as for all of January and then start from scratch again with the
template in February or March. You are likely to be okay with this it's more
likely to corrupt if you keep repurposing the document over a long period of
time. It only needs to corrupt once for all future documents to be affected.
You can safely copy content from the last bulletin into the new document
created from the template by copying the content into notepad first and then
from there into the new document. This will ensure that any corruption is
removed as the content will be plain text only, it will also ensure that the
text follows the styles in the template rather than bringing along it's own
styles.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, I've been reusing the same document (more or less) since 1995. From
time to time I'll notice that the compatibility is set to, say, Word 2.0,
and update it, but I really haven't had any problems with corruption. But it
is a fairly simple document: four columns on one (legal landscape) page, one
frame, one wrapped and one inline graphic, and the rest all text, all
formatted with styles.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.