Word 2010 helps you save time and easily reuse content in your documents by
using either built-in or custom Building Blocks.
With Building Blocks, you can quickly and efficiently add design elements to
your document. Almost all of the Building Blocks are found on the Insert tab of the ribbon.
This sample document includes four different kinds of Building Blocks.
It includes a cover page, it includes a header, it includes a footer, and it
also includes a quote box, a kind of text box.
Like the other graphic elements in your document, all of the colors that are
being used by the Building Blocks are determined by your document's theme.
If we switch our theme, Page Layout > Themes, you'll notice that the Building
Blocks change as well.
Each of these elements was added to the document from the Insert tab, and you'll
notice that the elements go together.
If you look, you'll see the boxes here reflected in boxes here and here.
The elements go together because they're all part of one family.
For example, if we choose Cover Page, you'll see a number of built-in cover pages.
They have names: Alphabet, Annual, Austere.
This is the family name, and this particular cover page was chosen from a
family named Tiles.
I want to remember that, because if I choose elements from the Tiles family as
my headers and footers, all of these documents elements will go together.
So when I insert a header, I can scroll down in alphabetical order to find
Tiles, and you'll notice that that's incredibly similar to the cover page that
I'm looking at, and my footer, in the same way.
Several families: Alphabet, Annual, Austere, Conservative, Mod, Motion, but
at the bottom, Tiles.
Now, not only do they go together in terms of design, but they form a complete set.
If I choose a header from Tiles and I choose a footer from Tiles, I won't have
duplicate information between the two of them.
Notice that the header has the document title and the date, and the footer has
the company address and a page number.
These elements won't always appear in the same places, but within a set of
headers and footers, you won't have a page number in two places, or a document
title in two places.
In addition to the header and footer and the cover page, there is an
element called a text box.
This isn't an old-fashioned text box; this is a new up-to-date text box with
interesting design elements. And text boxes come in two kinds, and they also have
the same list of family names.
So you'll find two entries for Tiles: one for a quote, one for a sidebar.
Two entries, for example, for Austere: one for a quote, one for a sidebar.
In addition to headers, footers, cover pages, and text boxes, there are other
types of Building Blocks as well:
Page numbers, watermarks, and equations and quick parts, a general category
that's empty to begin with, because it's waiting for the custom Building
Blocks that you create.
Quick parts are described later in this chapter, and I'll show you watermarks
along with the other Page Layout tools in Chapter 10.
Microsoft Word's Building Blocks are easy to use, easy to create, and give your
document an attractive, professional, designed look.