All of the Word, Publisher, and PowerPoint templates on the Purdue Extension Communication Survival Guide site have been updated .
These templates incorporate the new Purdue Extension Web site address and a few other features. But the big change is that there are five times as many templates as before. That’s because, in addition to the standard template set, there are template sets for each of the four Purdue Extension program areas.

But before you start using the ANR, CFS, ECD, or 4-H templates, remember that you should use the standard Purdue Extension templates in virtually all applications. It’s the standard Purdue Extension identity, which is what most readers should be able to recognize. You should only use the ANR, CFS, ECD, and 4-H templates in applications that are unique to those programs.

Why?

In most cases, your readers don’t necessarily care or need to know that you’re representing a specific program area. The important thing for them (and for all of us) is that readers associate your information with Purdue Extension.

Remember, there are no template police out there. If you use the ANR template when you probably should have used the standard template (or if you didn’t use one of these templates at all) nobody’s going to knock on your door or call you in the middle of the night. These templates are tools for you to use or not. And like any tool, you can use them as you like — but a screwdriver usually works better than a butter knife.

The templates were designed to work with the latest version of Microsoft Office, but Word files were saved using the “.doc” file extension instead of the new “.docx” file extension. That’s so those who haven’t been upgraded can still use the files.

Special notes to Safari users

If your primary Web browser is Safari (mostly Mac users), you may encounter some downloading issues with these templates. If you normally just click on a file to download it, Safari adds a “.dot” file extension to the end of the file. You can simply remove this from the file name after you’ve downloaded it (by renaming it). Or, you can right click (CONTROL + click) on the link and select “Download linked file as . . .”.

No matter how you try to download a PowerPoint template in Safari, it’s going to add a “.pot” file extension to the name. Simply rename the file by removing the “.pot” part of the name. The file will work correctly.

So far, these problems have not been encountered in other browser platforms.

Kevin Leigh Smith, kevlsmith@purdue.edu

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