USE AN OFFICE-WIDE LETTERHEAD TEMPLATE

Nearly every firm or office makes use of an office-wide letterhead. It is one of those things that you want to be consistent for everyone in the office.If your office or firm uses pre-printed letterhead, then you might not find this post all that useful. However, if your firm prints its letterhead as part of the letter itself - you put a blank piece of paper in the printer and a letter with your letterhead on it comes out - then I'd encourage you to read on.

Ideally, everyone in the office should pull their letterhead from the same template. Otherwise, in order to change the letterhead to add or delete a name you would have to change multiple files. In our office, we designed our letterhead in Word. Then we saved it as a .dotm file instead of a .docx file by going to file, choosing save as, and changing the type to .dotm. A .dotm file is a macro-enabled template, while a .docx file is simply an ordinary Word file. That template file was then stored on the central server accessible to everyone in the office.

Ordinarily, when you open a .dotm file, it opens the file as an untitled .docx file but will have the appearance of the template. Thus, it will have all of your letterhead information and just be awaiting the letter be typed. In this way, the template is used to generate the new untitled .docx file, but the template itself is never altered. More importantly, it keeps others from accidentally altering the template or saving over it by accident. Moreover, many people can access the template file at the same time without problem. And when it comes time to update your letterhead, the template is the only file that needs changed and everyone will receive that change.

Instead of opening old letters to use the letterhead or having a letterhead file on your own computer, take the time to create a letterhead template file everyone in your office will use.