OpenOffice: How to create templates for a letterhead
When you write letters in OpenOffice, it saves you a lot of time and effort to create your own templates with placeholders for letterhead, etc. You can find out how to do this in this practical tip.
Standards for letterhead templates
- The standard DIN 5008 basically regulates the writing and design rules for word processing. This also includes the design of letters.
- The standard distinguishes two types of letters, which differ among other things in the height of the letterhead. This is either 27 mm (Form A) or 45 mm (Form B).
- The latter is, for example, well suited for business letters where you want to place a logo in the letterhead.
- The different letterhead heights have an impact on the placement of all of the following parts of the letter, from the address field to the folding stamps.
- The content of the letterhead is entirely up to you.
- The distance of all lines of text to the left margin is 25 mm.
- The fold marks are 87 mm and 192 mm for Form A, 105 mm and 210 mm for Form B.
Manually create a letterhead template in OpenOffice
- Open an empty Writer document.
- Use the rectangle drawing tool and mark the area for the letterhead at the top of the sheet with the dimensions mentioned above.
- You can now freely design your letterhead within the placeholder.
- Below the placeholder you can also create the other parts of the letter such as the return address, address field, subject line, title, text field etc. as a placeholder.
- Choose File> Document Template> Save.
- Give your template your desired name, mark the area "My templates" and click "Save".
- To use the new template, choose File> New> Templates And Documents.
- Now click on "Templates" in the left column and then double-click on "My Templates".
- Select your own template and confirm with "Open".
- You can now edit and save the document as usual.
Design a template in OpenOffice with the letter assistant
If the manual creation of a letterhead template is too complex for you, OpenOffice offers with the letter assistant an extremely practical tool.
- Choose File> Wizards> Letter. The wizard will guide you step by step to the finished letter template.
- In order to obtain space for a letterhead, in the first step choose "Page design" as the type "Business letter" and, for example, the page design "Office" in the dropdown menu.
- Click “Next” and in the window that opens, select the elements that you want to print in your template.
- Follow the given steps, name your template, determine your location and end the process by clicking "Finish".
- Open the template as described above and edit it as usual.
As an alternative to the two variants mentioned above, there are already a number of free templates for OpenOffice online that you can use or change according to your needs. You can find an overview in our practical tip "Open Office Templates - here they are".
