Office Insider : templates

Keep the kids busy with Easter craft ideas

StephB — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:37:39 GMT

The school holidays are upon us again, so here’s a couple of Easter projects to keep the kids occupied, without breaking the bank. It’s easy to find Easter craft themes and you can get hold of craft supplies such as coloured feathers, pom-poms and googly eyes easily and cheaply at local stationary suppliers. Time to get out that glitter and glue again!

Make an Easter basket

Turn an old ice-cream or yoghurt tub into an Easter basket. Cover with wrapping or craft paper and make a handle with ribbon or old fabric. To decorate, the kids can print out and colour in Easter clip art, and stick on sequins, feathers and coloured paper shapes. Line with shredded paper or coloured tissue and voila, a magnificent Easter basket ready to fill with Easter goodies. Use for an Easter egg hunt or fill with home-made biscuits or treats for a thoughtful present for relations.

Soup up Easter lunch

Make Easter lunch extra egg-citing (sorry) for the kids with a special Easter menu and place cards for each visitor. Stick the place cards to thin card for extra strength. If they’re feeling more adventurous start with one of the basic place card templates and enhance with Easter clip art, pens, craft feathers and lots of imagination.

Let me know if you have any more!

Spring comes to Office Online

StephB — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:07:56 GMT

Well it’s four days into March and I’m very happy to see the first of the spring flowers out in the garden and a hint of milder weather to come! We’re celebrating spring-time on Office Online with a bonanza of free resources for you to use and enjoy.

Planning a wedding?

Visit the Templates section for some really useful planning resources, including invitation templates and budget planners. There are lots of other templates you might want to use for your wedding from photo albums to place cards to gift trackers.
Set up an Office Live Workspace for your wedding planning, so you can share ideas and keep plans in sync with your fiance, relatives or bridesmaids. You can keep some folders private so you can keep share dress ideas with your girlfriends but keep them hidden from the groom, or keep those embarrassing baby pictures for the best man’s speech a surprise! After the wedding use your Workspace to share pictures and track your thank you notes.
Browse templates categories and wedding clip art for more DIY wedding ideas!

Make a Mothers Day surprise

Kids love making home-made Mothers Day cards – it’s a guaranteed hug and smile from Mum! Starting with a template from Office Online makes it easy to get results they (and you) will be really proud of :). See if Mum deserves a Mothers Day certificate for something a bit different!
Browse the Office Online clip art collections to illustrate their Mothers Day creations. Try flowers, Spring or hearts for starters.

Share your Spring creations

If you’re getting creative with Office and come up with any Spring gems don’t forget to upload and share your templates so other Office Online visitors can benefit from your skills :).

Making thank-you cards easy

GillLeFevre — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:13:25 GMT

Embarrassing confession: for whatever reason, I always struggle with thank-you cards. My excuse is that the effort involved in getting Christmas cards out to family and friends around the world leaves me so exhausted that I can't even think about thank-you cards until February, by which time they're out of date and not worth doing.

This year, I've put Office Online on the case and as you'd expect, it's looking a lot easier!

First of all, there's a thank-you card template. There were hundreds of templates that came back when I searched for "thank you card" but this was the only one that had the quarter-fold approach that I was after. (Although I've just discovered there is also a similar photo greeting card available which is also quite handy.)

Yes, the template is a bit dated (and it certainly demonstrates how much Microsoft Office has improved the graphics in recent versions) but it's going to be fine as a starting point. I'm going to edit it so that the cover has a different graphic (probably a family Christmas photo) and being really efficient (ok, I mean really lazy!), I'll also look to use mail merge to customise the text for each recipient.

Then all I need to do is sign the cards and send them -- and even I can get that done before Blue Monday.

Most popular templates in 2008

GillLeFevre — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:55:23 GMT

So we've seen which how-to articles were the most popular this year, but what about templates? I'm a big fan of the free Office Online templates and regularly try to point out some of the hidden gems contained on the website, so I was really interested to see which templates have been downloaded the most over the year...

1. Fax cover sheet (Professional design)

2. Technology business brochure (2-pg, 11 x 17)

3. Memo (professional theme)

4. PTA agenda

5. Chronological CV (minimalist theme)

Then there were a couple of other examples in the top 20 that stood out... ranging from a 2008 event schedule planner (here's the 2009 version) to a checklist for your ideal dog.

Stay tuned for the most popular training courses from 2008...

Happy new year!

Dazzle with PowerPoint

GillLeFevre — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:43:16 GMT

We regularly say that there's so much good stuff on Office Online that it's hard to keep up with it all. So full marks to the PowerPoint blog team for spotting these amazing text and picture templates.

Here are a few of my favourites:

NB: Don't be disappointed if the download page on Office Online looks a little sparse. Each of the downloads has at least 15 different slides (plus instructions).

Unleash your creativity (and share it with the rest of us!)

StephB — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:48:50 GMT

A lot of Office Online visitors head for our Templates section to make everything from birthday invitations to school reports. If you’re super-creative (and I know you are) you can now share your masterpieces with our 4 million visitors a month by submitting your own templates. The process takes a few minutes but stick with it, at the end you’ll have the satisfaction of seeing your template listed alongside the professionally-designed templates on Office Online.

Here’s what you need to do;

1. Go to the ‘Templates’ page on Office Online.

2. Click the ‘Submit a Template’ link in the left-hand menu. You can also take a look at the recently submitted templates to see what others have submitted.

3. Check that your template meets the criteria shown on the next screen.

4. Log in using your Live ID.*
*Your Live ID is same login you use for Hotmail, Live mail, Live spaces and many other Microsoft services. If you don’t have one you can create one easily on the next page.

5. Choose a screen name. This will appear alongside any templates you submit.

6. Find the template you want to submit by clicking ‘Browse’ and navigating to where you’ve saved your template on your computer.

7. Add a descriptive name for your template.

8. Choose a category for your template. If the suggested categories don’t suit your template you can browse for a different category.

9. Add a description for your template. You don’t have to do this but if you add a good descriptive description (!) more people are likely to find your template when they search. Press ‘next’ and you’re nearly there.

10. On the next screen you can review what you’ve submitted. Once you’re happy, review the terms and conditions, choose ‘I agree’ to accept and then press the ‘Upload’ button.

11. That’s it! Your template should be visible in a couple of days, so be sure to check back to look for it.

Do you love Office Online?

StephB — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:34:00 GMT

So, this is my first ever blog post. A little lame perhaps, given that I’ve been working with the internet for… hmmm… around 12 years, but what can I say except ‘better late than never’! I have the great pleasure of managing the Office Online web site for the UK. There are many things that are fab about Office Online but here are my top 3;

· It’s free

· It’s actually very, very useful

· It has a great audience J

Despite the fact I spend my working week making decisions about the site, I never cease to be amazed by the depth of resources available on Office Online – and the creativity of the people who visit the site to use them! Did you know there are over 150,000 Clip Art, images and sounds, nearly 51,000 templates and around 850 training courses on Office Online UK? So whatever you’re trying to make or do with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Publisher or any other Office application the chances are they’ll be something on Office Online to help.

I’d love to hear what you love (or don’t) about Office Online so don’t be shy, post a comment J.

Office Online fabulous-ness

GillLeFevre — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:42:41 GMT

Sometimes I think Office Online is one of Microsoft's best kept secrets. Sure, most people have used a help link at some point or other, but the wide range of additional resources that you can find on the site is usually overlooked.

Take templates. Increasingly the different Microsoft Office products are coming with a stack of templates, but you can always get more from Office Online. I had a look around for PowerPoint themes and the "Design Slides" were a terrific repository of different looks - great both to use directly and for inspiration for your own designs.

Here are a few of my favourites!

Classic photo album	Photo journal design template
Employee orientation presentation	Fireworks design template