Q & A: Microsoft Word versatile enough for templates

12/3/2010

Q: I have created my own electronic version of letterhead stationery in Microsoft Word for e-mailing and faxing. Can I save this file as a template?

A: Once the letterhead document is set up — with fonts, formatting, styles, and margins in place — click on the Microsoft Office button or go to the File menu and choose the Save As option. Type a name for the fi le and in the Save As box and choose Word Template as the file type or format from the pop-up menu.

If Word doesn't automatically point the file to its own templates folder, find the Templates, My Templates or Trusted Templates folder; the name varies by system and version of Word. Microsoft has instructions for finding template file locations in Office 2007 and 2010 at support.microsoft. com/kb/924460.

To make a new document from the letterhead template in Office 2010, go to the File menu, choose New, click on My Templates and select the appropriate template. (On some Mac versions of Word, choose Project Gallery from the File menu, click on My Templates in the box and select a template.)

Microsoft dedicates part of its Office site to templates (including tutorials, user forums, and free templates to download) at office.microsoft.com/templates.

Q: I have some selfportraits I took with the Mac's Photo Booth program, but I want to adjust the color on them. Is there any easier way to get them into Adobe Photoshop without having to e-mail them to myself?

A: Photo Booth, included with Mac OS X, is used mainly for taking pictures and videos with the built-in iSight cameras on most current Macs. Although the program has several special effects and backgrounds, an image-editing program can be more useful for tweaking the color and the crop.

The Photo Booth window includes icons that let users send a selected image to Apple's iPhoto software or attach it to a mail message. Users can also just click and drag a selected thumbnail picture from the window to put a copy of the file on the desktop or in a folder. Then open it with Adobe Photoshop.

In Photo Booth, users can see the location of the original picture on the Mac's hard drive. Click on the thumbnail image and choose Reveal in Finder from the File menu; the keyboard shortcut for the same action is Command-R. From here, you can drag the photo to a new location. Recent versions of Photo Booth can also take video clips or a series of four snapshots that can form an animated GIF file for use as a buddy icon. To get either of these types of files out of Photo Booth, select the file, go to the File menu and choose Export.