Click on the Start Menu and, then click on Search. Now search for “*.DOT”. You will get a list of such files present on your computer. What are these .dot files? What are they used for? And what does DOT mean? DOT stands for Document Template and this is the extension for all the template files used by Microsoft Office Word 2003. Template is document which has settings like font, font size, orientation or any other format related settings saved in it. When you open such template you are present with a document formatted according to the template design. In Microsoft Word 2003 there is a default template called as Normal.Dot and whenever you open a new document in Word 2003 it opens basis the formatting instructions saved in Normal.Dot. Just for experimenting open the normal.dot itself in Word. Change the font size or make it bold. Now save the Normal.Dot with these changes and open a new file now. You will see that the new file will have the font size that you selected in Normal.Dot and it when you will type anything it will appear in Bold by default. Now you would have got a good idea what a template is for, and what is its use.
Apart from just saving the Formatting style templates can be used for number of purposes. For example there can be templates for writing letter which will give you the components of letter already present in your document and all you need is to fill in your details in it. Another example can be of Resumes. You can select from the resume templates and just fill in your details in the already formatted document and your resume will be ready. There are many Templates already there in Microsoft Office Word 2003 but if you want you can download more from the internet or from Microsoft itself. Here in this article we will describe how to get more templates downloaded in your copy of Microsoft Word 2003.
Open Microsoft Word 2003 and click on the File Menu and then on New. Then click on Template and then on Templates on Office Online. This will open the browser window and will take you to the online database of Microsoft Word Templates. All the templates here would be located categorically and you can choose from a vast range of options. You even can search for templates by using the search field and can download the template by clicking on it and saving it on your hard drive. Once saved, just move the template in the templates folder where Microsoft Word stores its templates. Now whenever you want to use this template just open it and start populating it by your information. The color, the fields, the fonts and their sizes etc will stick to the one defined in the templates but can also be changes. Make sure that you save the file as .DOC and not save the changes to your .DOT file, because you would need the template in future as well.
