Microsoft Word is a powerful authoring tool that allows you to quickly create professional content. You can develop templates with the styles and other standard elements you need to deliver polished technical documentation. Microsoft Word provides many automation features to streamline the content development process. The new XML-based formats allow Microsoft Word to integrate content with other Microsoft Office products.

This section describes the design considerations for a Microsoft Word template. By effectively designing your Microsoft Word template, and by consistently applying styles throughout your source documents, you can streamline single-sourcing processes and reduce your production and maintenance costs. This section does not describe all Microsoft Word processes, but it focuses on the design considerations related to ePublisher.