Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

Building the Skeleton of Your Form

Whether you ultimately want your forms to be used as hard copy or an online format, the first step is the same: creating a template containing the “shell” of the form. The shell is the text, layout, and formatting elements that remain constant whenever the form is used. To create a template from scratch, open a new blank document, click Save, choose Document Template from the Save as Type drop-down box, and click Save.

NOTE

If you originally created a printed form in Word and you now want to turn it into an electronic form that can be filled out from within Word, open the original Word file and resave it as a template.

After you create your template, you must create a framework for your form. You can use all ...