When we opened the template dialog box at the start of our calendar exercise, you may have noticed a lot of other items in that dialog box. Those items are standard templates, meaning when you open them they look just like a document.

Remember that you can open the templates dialog box by following one of these steps:

1. In Word, click the File menu and click New. In the New Document task pane, click the On My Computer link.
2. Click the Start menu, choose Programs (or All Programs), and then click New Office Document.

The templates dialog box looks like this:

(Remember that opening the templates dialog box from the Start menu will show you templates for all your installed Office applications.)

Then, pick the template you want to use and click OK.

Once you’ve clicked OK, the document will open in its own window. Depending on what you’ve selected, it can contain sample images, formatting, and text.

You can edit this document to make it your own just like you would a blank document. The great thing about templates is they’re a great starting point, especially for documents with complicated formatting like resumes, brochures, and reports.