Computer Tutor: Tips & Tricks
Creating a New Template in Word
Creating a Mortgage Calculator in Excel

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Creating a New Template in MS Word ...
Microsoft Word comes with a number of default templates for a fairly wide variety of useful word processing tasks.  From invoices & calendars to newsletters & legal pleadings, Word can give you a jump start on many of your word processing tasks.

But what if the supplied templates don't cut it for the tasks you have in mind?  Simple.  Create your own.  Basically, you have two ways to go -- either create a new template from scratch, or you can modify an existing template to better suit you.

If you want to customize an existing template, simply open an instance of it, then make your changes.  If you want to create one from scratch, simply open a blank {default} Word document.  From there, either way, the basic tasks are the same:

1. Set up & format your document ... with whatever fonts or images or symbols you want.

2. When you're ready to save it as a template, click File, then Save As ...
   

3. In the pop-up dialog box that appears, click the down arrow next to Save as type & choose 'Document Template'.
   

4. The folder location will automatically switch to the default 'Templates' folder, with sub-folders for each of the tabbed windows you see when you open a new template.
   

5. Simply choose the folder you want to store it in, give your new template a name {with the default *.dot extension} ... and you're done.

Now, whenever you want to use it, choose File, then Open {or the shortcut if you placed it on your toolbar -- see last issue's tip on Customizing Office Toolbars}, and go to the tab / folder where you saved the template & double-click.

Creating a Mortgage Calculator in Excel ...
With so many free mortgage and other calculators running around out there, why would you want to create one in Excel?  Good question.

Our answer:  With so many program already on your PC, why would you want to add yet another when you don't have to?  ...  Really, though, the answer has more to do with two advantages of creating your own:  First, you can customize it to suit you, including as many instances of the calculator on a single worksheet as you like, in order to compare different rates, etc.  But maybe the best reason is that it will provide you with an intro to using some of the many Excel functions {formulas} that make Excel the powerful spreadsheet program that it is.

The following table shows the loan calculator results ... showing payments monthly & annually, for both interest-only & full payments, as well as the total amount paid over the life of the loan ... on a loan of $100,000 for 30 years [360 months]: The cells are formatted for currency, percentages, etc.

The cells are formatted for currency, percentages, etc.

	A	B	C	D
1	LOAN AMORTIZATION: PAYMENT CALCULATOR
2
3	LOAN AMT.:	$100,000
4	INTEREST:	7.500%	as percent
5	TERM:	360	in months
6		MONTHLY	ANNUALLY	TOTAL
7	PAYMENT:	($699.21)	($8,390.57)	($251,717.22)
8	INTEREST ONLY:	($623.60)	($7,483.20)

The following table shows the formulas to enter in the appropriate cells, as well as the number we entered for the above example:

	A	B	C	D
1	LOAN AMORTIZATION: PAYMENT CALCULATOR
2
3	LOAN AMT.:	100000
4	INTEREST:	0.075	as percent
5	TERM:	360	in months
6		MONTHLY	ANNUALLY	TOTAL
7	PAYMENT:	=PMT(C5/12,C6,C4,0)	=C8*12	=C6*C8
8	INTEREST ONLY:	=IPMT(C5/12,C10,C6,C4)	=C9*12

Obviously, you don't need to include a title in the first row the way we've shown.  Also, if you want to be able to compare multiple mortgage scenarios, simply copy and paste the cells above into a new region on your worksheet.

Finally, you can use the same principles applied here to save other Excel functions as handy calculators.  The variety of functions is pretty solid -- from financial & statistical formulas to math & trig, engineering, logical functions, and more.  If you're not already familiar with them, building this simple

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