A brand new, blank page in Google Docs—or Google Sheets or Google Slides—can be daunting. Where to begin? What to say? One way of getting your next project moving is to load up one of the dozens of file templates provided in Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Not only do they give you a solid start with whatever you’re working on, they also give you a better idea of the capabilities of these online office tools. You might come across document types or layout features that you’d never known about.
Templates are available across Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides (and a bunch of new ones just got added), but we’ll focus on Google Docs here—the approach for finding and setting up templates is very similar in the other web apps too.
Getting started with templates
In the words of Google, “templates help users save time since they don’t have to build documents from scratch, create more uniform, high-quality, visually appealing documents, and enable them to be more productive with the latest Docs features in their daily processes.” And getting started is simple.
There are a few different ways to create a template. If you’re in Google Drive on the web, you can click New > Google Docs > From a template, which will bring up the template picker. You can also head to the dedicated Google Docs portal page, where the templates are listed above your recent documents (click Template gallery to see more).
Templates are split up into sections such as letters, resumes, and newsletters, so make it easier to find something suitable—though of course there’s nothing to stop you opening a template created for one purpose and then using it for something else. Every part of a template can be edited, just like a normal document.
Beyond the thumbnails and descriptions of each template, there’s no way to preview what a template looks like other than by opening it up and having a look (you can always delete the document later). Note that certain templates include a variety of page designs within them, so scroll down to see everything that’s on offer.
When you’ve found something you think you like the look of, click on the template document to create the document thumbnail. You’ll get a new document based on the template in your Google Drive, with a generic title attached to it. Any subsequent changes you now make are saved to the new document—you won’t overwrite the template.
Making changes to templates
Every part of a template can be edited, so you’re free to keep as much or as little of it as you want: You can adjust font styles and sizes, picture placement, paragraph spacing, and everything else that can be changed in a normal document. You won’t find anything locked or fixed just because you’re using a template.
If there’s an image in the template, for example, click on it to bring up some alignment and text wrapping options underneath. On the same small toolbar that pops up, click the three dots then All image options to see every property of the image, and to make changes where needed. You can rotate or recolor it, for example.
You can replace template text anywhere in the document just by selecting it, and then typing out new text—if you’ve got the selection parameters right, the formatting should be retained. If you make a mistake, you can always use the undo reverse arrow button on the toolbar (or hit Ctrl+Z on Windows or Cmd+Z on macOS). Another option is to open up the same template again and restart from scratch, of course.
Templates can be thought of as giving you a solid foundation for the rest of your document, and saving you some time when it comes to formatting and layout—though they’re not going to do everything for you. You still get plenty of opportunity to stamp your own style on the various document properties, and adapt it to your needs.
You can actually use any of your documents as a template, though they’re not officially labeled as such—it means you can use something you’ve made as a base for creating new files (you could create a custom company sales report template, for instance). Open the existing document you want to build on, then choose File > Make a copy.
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