If you’re like most users of Microsoft applications–whether you use the applications by choice or by mandate from your IT department—you’re also unlikely to be using some very powerful, free tools available to you: templates. Microsoft has a huge library of useful templates online. Users at large create many of the templates, their quality is voted on, and the top-rated templates rise to the top in categories such as Expense Reports, Brochures, Letters to Prospective New Employees, Resumes and CVs, Calendars, Business Cards, Stationery, and more.
The submission and voting processes for the templates ensure that the first templates you see in the library have top-notch designs. You can download any of the templates for free, and you can then customize them to your liking.
Additionally, you can get to the template site from within any of the Office applications. For example, let’s say you want to standardize your small company on an expense report form. In Excel, select File, New, and then in the New Workbooks pane select Templates on Microsoft.com. Once at the site, click on Expense Reports. As of this writing, there are nearly 81,000 downloads of the top-rated Expense Report template, and nearly 5,000 votes for it. You’ll find that there are customized versions for tracking mileage and other needs.

Likewise, you can find Word templates for brochures, stationery, company newsletters and many more types of documents. The screenshot shown below is a snippet of one of the top-rated brochure templates.

Don’t forget that the documents and spreadsheets you download can also be converted to other file formats if you want to use them in other applications. And, if you happen to be interested in highly advanced spreadsheets for tasks such as pricing derivatives, those are available for free online as well. The bottom line: Any time you want to create a new document type, spreadsheet type, build a resume or develop another creation, check the library first.
Do you have any good tips for Office applications?
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/08\/25\/somebody-already-built-your-document\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_a0fcf05995e4d3bf5c415b769ff0d78e","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}