How to Use the MyTemplates Folder - (2024)

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In this video we're going to show an alternate method for editing our stock Proposal Pack templates that has some benefits for a few different situations. This new feature is called the MyTemplates folder. If you look in your Proposal Kit installation usually it's the C: drive ProposalKit folder ProposalPack folder.

You'll see a new folder called MyTemplates. That's a ReadMe instruction manual so read that for the details. We're going to basically be covering what's in that ReadMe and there's an Examples folder with a couple example templates and this will show you how a couple templates have been set up for this use.

This folder will start out empty and this is for you to copy our stock templates into. Any of our stock templates you copy into this folder and edit your custom versions in this folder will be used instead of our stock template library. Just to show where all of our stock templates are so in this example we have our Aqua #6 design theme installed.

Whatever design theme you've purchased and installed will be your current style and in every Proposal Pack design theme here's the root folder in your C: drive C:\ProposalKit\ProposalPack\Aqua_6_v18 there's a Documents subfolder and Word subfolder. This is where the over 2000 chapter templates you can see the chapter files here are stored. In the past if you wanted to make your own edits to our stock templates that get pulled into every proposal you would just open and edit our stock templates in this folder.

Now since there's over 2000 that can be a little cumbersome sometimes to to manage so I'll go over the benefits of putting your own copy into the MyTemplates folder. The Wizard has features to manage this for you copying the templates from from our stock folder into this folder and manipulating the documents to get them in the format needed. We'll cover all those features in the Wizard software next.

Some of the reasons for doing this beyond just keeping your own copies in the folder, one benefit is that does consolidate all your changes to our stock templates into one location that makes it easier to migrate from an old system to a new system and it helps keep all of your custom content self–contained within a new folder versus scatterground within a folder of thousands of other files. Another benefit for this is the Wizard has a feature where it can build you an editable version of any of our sample proposals. Now in that case there's a separate set of these pages for all the samples.

If you want to be able to use that sample content in future proposals versus just a one–off this feature will help you copy the sample content pages into the MyTemplates folder for future reuse. Also, if you have a network setup where you've put the Proposal Pack design theme set of chapters out on a shared network for everybody but then you want to have individual users have their own copy of a particular document using the MyTemplates folder. Another benefit is if you are one of the companies that have multiple design themes that you switch between you have pages that are going to be identical between the proposals you create in different design themes, instead of having to maintain multiple copies of those chapters, one for each design theme, you can use a single copy in the MyTemplates subfolder.

Those are all the benefits to using this new MyTemplates feature. I'll show next here in the Wizard how you copy our stock templates into the MyTemplates folder. The first place is in the Document Styles button.

Click Edit Style, click the Manage Templates tab, click the Edit Stock Templates button. This screen gives you access to the thousands of templates that I showed you in that Documents\Word folder. You can open that folder with this button, but we're going to use this Copy to MyTemplates Folder.

We can sort these lists alphabetical. Let's say we want to have our own copy of the Company History page. I'm going to find the Company History.

Once I've selected an item you'll see the yellow arrow pointing here to these buttons. If I click the first one this will open the stock template. You can see here's our stock Company History.

For use in the MyTemplates folder because that removes the use of the design theme so that these templates can be used in multiple design themes we have to remove all elements. We'll be removing this Company History chapter header and any other design theme elements like these footers, custom bullet points, the colors will be changed to a base default design. The Wizard will do all that for you.

This is the stock one. Now I want to copy that into the MyTemplates folder. I'm just going to click this button and just click through the messages.

Will this template be used across multiple design themes? I'm going to say yes and that's going to cause the Wizard to change some elements in that copy and we'll show you what it does. Now the copy is done and I can open the folder. I can open the file and you see in the MyTemplates subfolder we now have a Company History.

If I click this Open Template button it's going to be the same as double clicking this file right here. Now here is the copy and you'll notice the Company History chapter header has been removed. The blue colors have been changed to gray and black and the footer's been removed.

Now this is in a default design theme so now that no matter what Proposal Pack design theme we've got, say if we have Aqua #6 and we switch to a completely different design theme with different logos and different colors. When the proposals get built and this copy from the MyTemplates gets used the design theme will be applied during assembly. This copy here can now be used across multiple design themes.

All right, and that's all there is to it. Now I can edit this copy Company History in the MyTemplates folder as much as I want. Every time I build a new proposal in the future using the Company History chapter my edits from the Company History template in the MyTemplates folder will get used instead of our stock copy.

Okay, that's all there is to it. Now I'll show you the second place you can copy documents into the MyTemplates folder and this will show you how to use the sample content. Now in the Document Projects button #2 we're adding a new project or if you're editing an existing project click the Pick Documents button.

You have to go to the Add Templates and you have to click the Show All Templates button. Now we have access to the thousands of templates in these drop–downs and again you can select the alphabetic list, it doesn't matter. That will make it a little easier.

Now we can find Company History and all the others. You may have already selected chapters for a proposal and if you've done so say we've clicked off Cover Letter, Title Page, Back Page, Introduction, Company History. We've selected the chapters for our proposals now we want to have a custom version of ours.

Click the Show all Templates button and just click this Only show templates selected in my project and now instead of the thousands of chapters only the five we selected are in these drop downs. That makes it really easy to select them and make a copy. Now we can do the Introduction.

I'm going to open up the stock template real quick you can see Introduction has got the chapter header. I'm going to copy my this to the MyTemplates folder. You can see the copy in the MyTemplates folder just has the header and footer removed.

Now for sample content now let's say we're doing an Architectural Design Sample Proposal. We can pop open the PDF sample and take a look at it. We can see what chapters are in here.

Let's use the Concepts template. We're going to make a copy of the Concepts chapter from the sample proposal because this is going to be different than the stock fill in the blank chapter. I'm going to import the content from the sample into the project.

You have the Concepts chapter imported. If we just build the proposal here it'll build it from the sample content but say we want to build future proposals using some of the sample content. We're going to click Add Templates and we can click the Concepts chapter.

If I click the Edit Stock Template button you can see this is just a fill in the blank general purpose Concepts chapter. This is different than what you just saw in the sample. This sample is a filled in version from an actual proposal.

I want to make a copy of the sample content so just like before we click the Copy to MyTemplates Folder button. You're going to see a different message it's going to ask you if you want to copy the sample content or the fill the blank. We're going to click Yes to copy the sample version.

You can see now we have a copy of the Concept chapter in the MyTemplates folder. Double click that and you can see this is the filled in sample content, not the stock fill in the blank content. Now every proposal I create in the future that has the Concept chapter selected will use this page from that sample which i can edit.

This is the easy way to make edits to our sample content for your future proposal use. You can see too that the chapter header is removed, the bullet points have been changed to our stock diamond bullet points so that way they get rebuilt into the design theme later. We'll show this really quick.

I have three chapters Company History, Concepts, Introduction. Introduction, Concepts, Company History are all selected for our project so we'll build a project here in the Aqua #6 design theme using these three chapters are getting pulled in from our MyTemplates folder. This document's been generated we'll pop it open.

This Introduction text got pulled in from this MyTemplates Introduction template. You can see the design theme put back the chapter header and the background design theme flows from the rest of the document, the footers got put back in. The Concepts chapter, this got pulled back in from the MyTemplates folder.

You can see here the Concepts chapter, it got pulled in from this copy in the MyTemplates folder. You can see the design theme got applied by the Wizard as it did the assembly. That's why we get back the Concepts chapter header, the sidebar graphics, the colors, custom bullet points, and footer.

It's only the text that you want in a generic looking design in the MyTemplates version and that will get pulled in to the assembled proposal with the design theme applied. If we had a completely different design theme this same text here would get pulled in and then the different design theme applied. Company History is pulled in from this MyTemplates chapter and again the colors, header/footer all get applied by the Wizard.

That is all there is to using this new MyTemplates folder feature.