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07 June 2010 - 10:10 PM | Posted by CallKathy
Categories: mixes
One of the first big articles I wrote for the web was a review of the top PowerPoint template sites on the web in the late 1990's. The sites created templates for Office 97 or 2000. Now, we are a decade later and templates have to work for multiple file formats and versions.
Thanks to Symbaloo, I have a better way to share template sources with the world. I have created a mix of PowerPoint, Word, and Excel template sources. I have verified that each of these sites exist and that they do offer templates that you would find useful.
When I wrote that first article, a template for PowerPoint was basically a slide with a background. A few places offered customized master slide backgrounds as well, but not many. I didn't know that many people who created templates for Word or Excel.
Now, we have templates that do just about anything you might want. PowerPoint templates can be anything from that slide background to a full cross-product theme that works with any Office document. Excel templates let you not just keep track of data, but also do extreme calculations and create extreme graphs from the data. Word templates now allow you to build just about any document you want - and recolor/theme it as you desire.
With the extra abilities and features people can build into templates, you would think that evaluating templates would be harder to do today than it was back then. It wasn't. In fact, it was easier. Many of the template sources out there still make very basic templates. The things people need from the templates really haven't changed that much: Users still need good quality templates that look great and take a bit of the work out of creating good looking documents.
I hope to update the mix in the near future with some Publisher and OneNote templates as well. I know they are out there, I just haven't looked yet. If you offer them, let me know!
Thanks to Symbaloo, I have a better way to share template sources with the world. I have created a mix of PowerPoint, Word, and Excel template sources. I have verified that each of these sites exist and that they do offer templates that you would find useful.
When I wrote that first article, a template for PowerPoint was basically a slide with a background. A few places offered customized master slide backgrounds as well, but not many. I didn't know that many people who created templates for Word or Excel.
Now, we have templates that do just about anything you might want. PowerPoint templates can be anything from that slide background to a full cross-product theme that works with any Office document. Excel templates let you not just keep track of data, but also do extreme calculations and create extreme graphs from the data. Word templates now allow you to build just about any document you want - and recolor/theme it as you desire.
With the extra abilities and features people can build into templates, you would think that evaluating templates would be harder to do today than it was back then. It wasn't. In fact, it was easier. Many of the template sources out there still make very basic templates. The things people need from the templates really haven't changed that much: Users still need good quality templates that look great and take a bit of the work out of creating good looking documents.
I hope to update the mix in the near future with some Publisher and OneNote templates as well. I know they are out there, I just haven't looked yet. If you offer them, let me know!
