Word Templates

Templates and files are only available to VA staff while authenticated on the VA network.

These templates allow consistency, uniformity, and foundational structure for accessibility across all documents. OIT has three templates in Word — Basic, Report, and Flyer.

Basic Template

The basic word template should be used for general-purpose OIT-level written communication.

Basic Template

Basic Lite Template

Report Template

The report template should be used to generate OIT-level official, written reports.

One Column

Two Columns

Flyer Template

This template should be used for general-purpose OIT flyers and announcements.

Flyer 01

Flyer 02

Tips and Tricks

Document Properties

Content creators are responsible to make sure the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Information and Technology, appears as the author in all documents.

Remove “DRAFT”

To Remove “DRAFT” Mark from Documents: Double-click on the header or footer area to activate the header and footer features. Once activated, you should be able to select the “DRAFT” mark and delete.

Remove “FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY”

To Remove “FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY”: Double-click on the header or footer area to activate the header and footer features, select the “INTERNAL USE” footer, and delete.

Use Word’s “Show or Hide Paragraph Symbol” button to show manual spacing

Maximizing accessibility is at the core of all our templates. Manual paragraph spacing in documents can result in a poor experience for people who use assistive technology. The Show or Hide Paragraph Symbol button will allow you to find all instances of manual spacing. You can find the button in the “Paragraph Settings” toolbar which is in the “Home” tab.

Use Ctrl to select entire sentences at once

If you hold down the Ctrl key and click a word, you will automatically highlight the entire sentence it’s in. This can also be done by triple clicking in a paragraph.

To delete pages with callouts or quotes

Find the section break before the callout and quote pages.

To do this, go to the Home tab then Show or hide paragraph marks.

When you delete a section break, Word combines the text before and after the break into one section. The new combined section (the entire document in this case) will use the formatting from the section that followed the section break.

To avoid this, use the link to the previous feature for both footers and headers.

To do this, double-click on the header or footer area to activate the header and footer features.
Click inside the header area and click the link to the previous one. Then click on the footer area and click the link to the previous one.
Lastly, activate the margins feature and change the top margin to 1.5” and the bottom margin to 1”

Select content in pages callout pages. Delete.

Screenshots of the Word Templates

Basic Lite

Basic Word

Report

Report: 1-Column

Report Template with quote and callout treatments

These templates provide a dynamic, magazine-like design with specialized treatments for callouts and quotes. The template files are available upon request.

To request any of these templates, contact the ITSC Creative Team.

Basic Template

Report Template