Sharing Templates with Others

As you've already seen, once you place a template in the Templates folder, it appears in the New Workbook dialog box where you can use it to create new workbooks. However, you may be disappointed to find out that you're the only one who can benefit from all your hard work. Co-workers using other computers won't be able to access your templates. In fact, your template won't even be available to other people who use the same computer if they log in with a different user name and password. That's because the Templates folder is a user-specific setting. You may use the folder C:\Documents and Settings\billjones\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates, but if Sarah Cheng logs onto the same computer, then Excel bothers to check only C:\Documents and Settings\sarahcheng\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.

You can use several strategies to get around this problem.

• You can give a copy of your template to everyone who wants to use it. Choose any way you like to transfer the template (by email, on a floppy disk or CD, over a network drive, and so on), but make sure you tell folks to put it in their own local Templates folder, as explained earlier.
• You can create a workgroup templates folder. In this case, multiple people will use the same workgroup template folder, so Excel automatically shows any template files you put there in everybody's New Workbook dialog box.

You can use the second option to share files between more than one user account on the same computer or, for even better results, on a network drive that a whole team of people can use. Unfortunately, Excel nearly throws a wrench into the whole process because it doesn't let you specify which folder to use for workgroup templates. However, Microsoft Word gives you a back door to the answer. Because Excel and Word both use the same template system, if you configure the workgroup templates folder in Word, it also takes effect in Excel.

Once you accept the fact that you need to rely on Word, the process actually becomes quite easy. Here's what you need to do:

1. Decide which folder you want to use as a shared folder:
   You may want to create a new folder now. If you do, the easiest approach is to use a tool like Windows Explorer.
   
2. Start Word
   You'll find Word in the Start menu. Choose Programs Microsoft Office Microsoft Word 2007.
   
3. In Word, choose Office button Word Options
   The Word Options dialog box appears. The Word Options dialog box looks fairly similar to the Excel Options dialog box.
4. From the list on the left, choose the Advanced section
   
5. Scroll down to the General heading (on the right), and click the File Locations button.
   This action opens the File Locations dialog box, which is the place where you tell Office applications where they should look for certain types of files. You can actually make three interesting changes here:
   
   • If you modify the Documents folder, Excel and Word start off in that folder the first time you choose to save or load a file after launching the application.
     
   • If you change the "User templates" folder, you can specify where Excel and Office look for user-created templates stored on your computer.
     
   • Finally, if you set the "Workgroup templates" folder, you can tell Word and Excel where to look for shared templates. This option is the one that interests you.
     
   
   
   
   If you haven't configured the workgroup templates folder before, you'll notice that it starts off blank. That's because Office has no idea where to put shared templates until you give it the right instructions.

   Remember, when Excel looks for templates, it searches both the user templates and the workgroup templates folders. Then it shows all the templates it found in the "My templates" list.

6. Select the "Workgroup templates" entry in the list, and then click Modify
   A Modify Location dialog box appears. This dialog box looks more or less the same as the standard dialog boxes you use to open and save files.
   
7. Browse to the folder you want to use, and click OK.
   Remember, you aren't limited to your local computer. Feel free to jump to a network drive, or even browse your network places to find a specific server.
   
8. Click OK again to close the Word Options dialog box.
   Now, the change has been made. Remember, in order for template sharing to work, everyone needs to perform this same set of steps to configure their copies of Excel to look in the same shared folder.
   

Template sharing is a simple idea that can become incredibly useful in a company environment. Instead of sending template files whizzing back and forth in emails, trying to keep a group of overworked employees in synch each time the template changes, you simply need to modify the templates in the shared location. That way, everybody always has the latest versions available, and there are no distribution headaches.