How to create a LibreOffice template

LibreOffice has been my office suite of choice for a very long time. This open-source office suite has been a part of every book I've written over the years, and it's never failed to serve. 

One way I use LibreOffice for that workflow is by way of templates. I work with a few different templates (such as the pre-formatted paperback book interior template that I depend on) and LibreOffice makes creating and using them a breeze. 

If you've never worked with a template before, let me explain its purpose. Basically, a template is either a pre-formatted or pre-written document that you create, use, and reuse to keep you from having to either go through the time-consuming process of formatting a document to spec or simply writing the same boilerplate over and over. Instead, you simply open the template and start adding the necessary content or details. 

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Anyone who has ever worked in an office has most likely used a template. 

So, how can you create your own templates in the LibreOffice open-source office suite? Let me show you how.

Creating a LibreOffice template

Requirements

To successfully create and use a template, the only thing you'll need is a running instance of LibreOffice. It doesn't matter which version of LibreOffice you are using (although I do suggest you always update to the latest version) nor does it matter what operating system you use. For my demonstration, I'll use LibreOffice 7.5.0.3 running on Pop!_OS Linux.

With the office suite installed and ready, let's get to the templates.

Using your new template

There are two ways to use your new template. If you already have Writer open, click File > New > Templates. Select the template you just created from the Templates gallery and click Open. A new document will be created, using the selected template.

The next method of using your template is when you open the LibreOffice Start Center (which will be called something like LibreOffice 7.5) in your desktop menu. 

Also: How to configure LibreOffice to default to MS Office file formats 

From that window, click Templates in the left sidebar and double-click the newly created template to open a new document. You can now start creating the new document, based on the template, in the resulting window.

And that, my friends, is all there is to creating LibreOffice templates. Create as many of these as needed to help make your workflow more efficient.