How to Make an Article Template with Microsoft Word

Sometimes you need a place to create your articles offline. There is nothing worse than working hard on an article, clicking publish, and having all your hard work vanish. Create an article template in Microsoft Word for a place to work on your articles safely. When you are done, just copy and paste. I am using Microsoft Word 2003. Newer versions should work in a similar fashion. If not, use HELP, as it will walk you through every step of the process.

Step 1 O pen Microsoft Word.

Step 2 Click on the Table Tool icon. It is on the taskbar and looks like this step.

Step 3 CONFIGURE TABLE: A window will appear so you can configure your table. You want 10 - 12 rows and 2 columns. Enter those numbers in the settings boxes. Then click the bubble next to AUTOFIT to CONTENTS. This will make the rows shrink or expand automatically according to how much text you put in them. A very nice feature. Click OK.

Step 4 SIZE THE TABLE: A small table will appear in the upper left corner of the paper. You need to format the size now. Click on the table. Notice the little squares that appear in the corners. Click, hold and drag the bottom one to adjust the size of the table. It should fill the page with room for the margins.

Step 5 SIZE THE COLUMNS: Move your cursor to the line between the columns. A little symbol will appear when you are over the line. It looks like two parallel lines with little arrows on each side pointing to the right and the left. Click, hold and drag the line to the left to make the first column narrow and the second column wide.

Step 6 SIZE THE TOP ROW: Do the same thing with the bottom line of the first row. Make it smaller. You only need this to put your title in, so doesn't need to be big.

Step 7 LABEL THE CELLS: In the Top Row, Put TITLE in the left column and HOW TO in the right column. Now put Intro, Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and so on in the left column in each of the cells.

Step 8 SAVE: Now save your template. Click on File. Choose SAVE AS... from the menu. Choose where you want to save the file on your computer. Enter EHOW ARTICLES in the File Name box. Under SAVE AS TYPE, choose DOCUMENT TEMPLATE from the pull down menu.

Step 9 Now you have a template you can use for all of your eHow articles. Just open the template, write your article, and save the article as a Word Document. Just copy and paste from your Word Document to eHow.