Introduction
Microsoft Office supports the concept of templates, which enable organisations to create documents in a consistent format. e.g. Speakeasy has a letter template for use in Microsoft Word. A user can pick a template from Word/Excel/PowerPoint when they click “New” to create a new document. This guide explains how Office 365 was configured so that Word/Excel/PowerPoint can access a folder containing one or more such templates – in our example, the templates will appear in a folder called “Speakeasy Templates”
As this configuration has already been performed, there may be no need to do this again, as one location is usually sufficient. However, Speakeasy may be involved in future projects where the use of certain templates is mandated – in which case it may be useful to have some project-specific templates in the future that appear under a separate folder
Instructions
There are three main steps to this configuration:
- Creating a site to store Sharepoint Document Libraries
- Create a Sharepoint Document Library to store the template files
- Register the Sharepoint Document Library so that the template files it contains are visible to users of Word/Excel/PowerPoint when a user creates a new document.
Creating a site to store Sharepoint Document Libraries
Navigate to the following Sharepoint home page:
https://speakeasy570.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx
Click “Create Site” and select “Communication site”.
Give the site a name – in our case, this was “Templates”. Provide a description and click “Finish”
Creating a Sharepoint Document Library
Once created – it can take several minutes – navigate to the “Templates” site. In the left-hand side menu, click “Libraries” and click “New…Document Library”. Give the document library a name – in our already-configured case this was “Speakeasy Templates”. Provide a description and click “Create”.
Once the document library appears in the screen, click the vertical ellipsis next to the library (“Speakeasy Templates”) and click “Settings”. Select “Permissions for this document library”
When the permissions screen appears, click the “Stop Inheriting Permissions” button
Click the “Grant Permissions” button. Specify the “Everyone except external users” inside the names or email addresses box, then click “Share”
Navigate back to the “Templates” content and click the “Speakeasy Templates” folder.
New Word templates (*.dotx), Outlook email templates (*.oft), Excel templates (*.xltx) and PowerPoint templates (*.potx) can be added to the document library as follows:
- Open the folder in SharePoint – use the following link to access the “Speakeasy Templates”:
Link to Speakeasy Templates in SharePoint - Click the Sync button to sync the files to a folder on your desktop. For “Speakeasy Templates”, they will probably sync to a folder called “C:\Users\cashy\Bury Speakeasy\Templates – Speakeasy Templates”
- Create new templates and copy files into that folder
Registering the Sharepoint Document Library with Office
To register the document library so that any templates are visible from the Office products, use PowerShell to execute the commands in the PowerShell script ConfiguringSpeakeasyOfficeTemplates.ps1, described in the following article:
Configuring Speakeasy Office Templates
Configuring Additional Folders – e.g. for Project-Specific Templates
Repeat the steps described in the section “Creating a Sharepoint Document Library” above, substituting “Speakeasy Templates” for “{ProjectName} Templates”. Similarly, when executing the commands in the PowerShell script, perform the same substitution.
More Information
Additional configuration is needed to enable in Microsoft Outlook to enable users to access any *.oft email templates. See the following article for m ore information:
Configuring Microsoft Outlook to Access Email Templates