Use of building blocks in word

Building blocks are pieces of reusable text, graphics, and objects that you can easily insert in your documents. They can be as simple as an opening line to a paragraph, or as complex as an entire cover page.

Create a Building Block

1. Select the text or graphic you want to save as a building block.
2. Click the Insert tab.
3. Click the Quick Parts button.
4. Select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.

   The Create New Building Block dialog box opens, where you can give the building block a name, category, and description.

   

5. (Optional) Change the building block’s name, category, and description.

   If the building block you’re creating is a cover page, page number, header, footer, quick table, or watermark, you can add it to one of those existing galleries. Otherwise, you can specify Quick Parts so that it will appear in the Quick Parts gallery.

6. (Optional) Select a gallery.
7. Click OK.

   

The building block is added to the selected gallery.

Insert a Building Block

Building blocks that you’ve added to certain galleries, such as the cover page, page number, or watermark galleries, will be available when you open those galleries.

If you want to see all the building blocks in one place, no matter which gallery you added them to, you can browse the Building Blocks Organizer.

1. Click the Quick Parts button on the Insert tab.

   The Quick Parts gallery will display the building blocks that you’ve added to that gallery. If the building block you want to insert is here, you can just select it.

2. Select Building Blocks Organizer.

   The Building Blocks Organizer window opens, listing all the building blocks available to insert.

   

3. Sort the building blocks by name, gallery, or category by clicking the column headers.
4. Select a building block.

   A preview of the building block appears on the right side of the window, with its name and description below.

5. Click Insert.

   

The building block is inserted.

Move a Building Block to Another Template

When you create a building block, it’s saved as part of a special Building Blocks template. Anything saved in this template will be available in any document you work on, from the computer it was created on. If you’ll only need a certain building block in documents based off one template, or if you want to distribute a building block with that template, you can save a building block to another template instead.

1. Click the Quick Parts button on the Insert tab.
2. Select the Building Blocks Organizer.

   As you can see in the Template column, building blocks can be stored in either document templates, or a special Building Blocks template.

   

3. Select a building block that you want to move.
4. Click the Edit Properties button.

   The Modify Building Block window opens, where you can edit the same properties that are available when you first create a building block.

   

5. Click the Save In list arrow.

   This list displays the Building Blocks template, as well as the template or templates that the current document is based on.
6. Select a template.

   

7. Click OK.
8. Click Yes.

   

The building block is moved to the selected template.

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Building blocks in Microsoft Word are pre-designed and customized blocks of text and formatting.These pre-designed and customized blocks of text and formatting techniques make it easier to insert content, including text and graphics, thereby cutting down on typing.

How do you create a building block in Word?

How to Create and Use Building Blocks in Word

1. Select the text or graphic you want to save as a building block.
2. Click the Insert tab.
3. Click the Quick Parts button.
4. Select Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.
5. (Optional) Change the building block’s name, category, and description.
6. (Optional) Select a gallery.
7. Click OK.

What are some common building blocks in Word?

Using Building Blocks, you can quickly customize common documents. You might be surprised at what Word considers a Building Block — headers, footers, watermarks, equations, page numbers, and text boxes are all Building Blocks now. Figure A shows just one of Word’s Building Block galleries.

What is a building block content control in Word?

A document building block is a predesigned piece of content, such as a cover page or a header or footer. Word includes a library of document building blocks that users can choose from to insert into a document.

What is the basic building blocks of a document?

Building blocks are saved objects or elements that you insert into a document, such as text, logos, tables or images, for example. The Building Blocks Organiser, which acts like is like a library of these stored building blocks that you can select and then paste into your document as needed.

What are the benefits of building blocks in Word?

Instead of having to retype or insert the same information over and over, you can save these elements as building blocks. You can then easily insert the building block into your document as required. Building blocks streamline the process of building documents and save time.

How do I create a building block?

On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Quick Parts, and then click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery. In the Create New Building Block dialog box, type the original name, category, and gallery for the building block entry, and then click OK.

Definition of building block
: a unit of construction or composition especially : something essential on which a larger entity is based. Synonyms & Antonyms Example Sentences Learn More About building block.

What are the five building block categories?

The different frameworks and tools available to impact investors can be classified into five broad categories: objectives, standards, certifications, methodologies and metrics. These building blocks come into play at different stages of the impact management process.

How do you remove building blocks in Word?

To delete a building block, follow these steps:

1. From the Insert tab, choose Quick Parts, Building Blocks Organizer. The Building Blocks Organizer dialog box appears.
2. Click the item to delete.
3. Click the Delete button.
4. When you are finished deleting blocks, click Close.

Where are building blocks stored in Word?

templates
Building blocks are stored in templates. By default, the templates that are included with Word have building block categories like “General” and “Built-In”.

What is the difference between building blocks and quick parts?

Quick Parts is an item (button) on the Insert tab. It opens a menu that includes AutoText, fields, and document properties. The menu also includes the Building Blocks Organizer but no building blocks per se (though AutoText is a type of building block).

What is building block signature?

In Word, Building Blocks are simply pre-defined objects – including images and text – that you can save and subsequently recall in any document.When you store content as a Quick Part, you can recall it and insert it into your document very quickly.

Why is block area important?

Development in all areas.
Blocks enhance children’s problem-solving abilities, mathematics skills, and language and literacy abilities. And constructing “creations” builds selfesteem and feelings of success.

What does save as building block mean?

Building blocks are reusable pieces of content like business information, headings, calendars, borders, and advertisements that are stored in galleries. You can access and reuse the building blocks at any time.

What is word building?

Definition of word-building
: the act or process of forming words: a : word-formation. b : the act or process of spelling out words (as in a contest) with the use of only those letters found in a particular word or phrase.

How do you make a text block?

To create a block of text:

1. Click the Text tool from the Basic palette, and select Horizontal from the Tool bar.
2. From the Tool bar, set the Tight Fill mode and Text Style.
3. Click and drag to create a text box of the approximate width needed.
4. Enter the text.
5. When the text block is complete, press the Esc key.

What is the first step to create an AutoText building block?

Follow these directions:

1. Type the text you want to stick into an AutoText building block. For example, your name, street name, business, or any text you regularly type.
2. Select the text.
3. Click the Insert tab.
4. In the Text group, click the Quick Parts button.
5. Choose AutoText → Save Selection to AutoText Gallery.
6. Click OK.

How do you create a building block in Excel?

In MS Word 365 there is an option to save a string to a “building block”. The procedure is to select the string and press ALT-F3. You are presented with a “CREATE NEW BUILDING BLOCK” dialog box containing the selected string and an option to “OK”.

What is the building block of sentence?

Clauses are the true building blocks of any sentence, and sometimes they form complete sentences on their own. Every sentence has at least one clause in it, but not every clause forms a complete sentence. Each clause contains a subject and a predicate (verb or verb phrase) of its own, and sometimes other modifiers.

What are the uses of blocks?

They are now used for a wide variety of purposes such as the construction of load-bearing walls, retaining walls, partitions and foundations. A standard block is 440 mm x 215 mm, the equivalent of 3 bricks high and 2 long, the maximum size that one person can comfortably lift.

Once you’ve created some building blocks, you can begin using them, which is described next. 

Inserting a Building Block into Your Document

Inserting a building block is as simple as selecting it from the applicable menu. For example, if you save a cover page to the Cover Pages gallery, it will appear on the Insert > Cover Pages drop-down menu. You can also insert them from the Building Block Organizer, discussed next.

Managing Your Building Blocks

Word provides a screen for:

• Editing building block properties;
• Deleting building blocks;
• Viewing a preview of the building block; and
• Inserting a building block.

The columns on the Building Blocks Organizer are sortable so that you can easily find blocks based on name, gallery, category, template, or description.

To access the Building Blocks Organizer:

1.   Click the INSERT ribbon.

2.   Click the Quick Parts drop-down and select Building Blocks Organizer.

What you’ve learned so far is enough to dramatically increase your productivity but you can take it even further. So, let’s take a look at how you can build your own ribbon so you can organize your building blocks under menus that you define. 

Building a Custom Ribbon

If you have a lot of building blocks, you may want to consider configuring a custom ribbon to make them easily accessible. For example, the screenshot below shows the custom ribbon that I created for KL&A’s proposal team. The first five options correlate to the Custom 1-5 galleries that I mentioned earlier; I’ve just renamed them to something meaningful for my team. That is, the Project Write-Ups option is actually the Custom 1 gallery and the Processes & Methods option is the Custom 2 gallery, and so on.

After you’ve created a custom ribbon, you can distribute the configuration and building block files to others in your organization so they too will have access to your library of assets. 

To create a custom ribbon for your building blocks:

1.   Select File > Options.

2.   On the Word Options dialog:

a.   Select Customize Ribbon from the pane on the left.

b.   Under the Customize the Ribbon controls on the right, select the ribbon name after which you want to insert the new ribbon and then click the New Tab button. A new tab containing one group will be created. 

c.   Right-click on a tab or group name to rename the tab and group. 

d.   Use the New Group button to add groups to the ribbon. This places all the commands into a block on the ribbon that is labelled with the group name.

e.   In the Choose commands from field above the left box, choose All Commands. Then select the commands you want to add to the custom ribbon and click Add. If you saved building blocks in the Custom Galleries 1-5, you will likely want to add them to your ribbon and rename them to match your categorization of content.

The screenshot above shows KL&A’s configuration for our proposal assets custom ribbon. The items under the Text (Custom) group are the renamed Custom Galleries 1-5. 

The Objects and Layouts group contains an option called Graphics. This is actually the renamed Custom Text Box gallery to which I save all commonly used graphics. 

To make creating and managing building blocks easier, I’ve also added Word’s building blocks commands to the ribbon under the Building Blocks Controls group.

Finally, I’ve added a couple of macros to the ribbon for formatting pictures, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

After you build this wonderful new ribbon, it’s time to send the ribbon configuration file and the building blocks template file to your team so they can benefit from the fruits of your labor. I’ll explain how to do both these tasks, starting with distributing the building blocks first.

Distributing Building Blocks

In the first topic of this post, I explained that you choose where to store your building blocks when you are creating them. I also recommended creating your own template file (dotx) for this purpose with some sort of version identifier in the file name so that your users can easily determine if they have the latest. For example, I append the file name with a date indicator—BuildingBlocks20191014.dotx. I also explained that placing this file in Word’s STARTUP folder automatically loads it when you start Word. This ensures that your building blocks are available without having to find and open the building blocks template each time you want to use them and it makes them easily distributable. 

After adding new building blocks or updating your existing building blocks, you can distribute the file in whatever fashion works best for your organization, such as email or posting to a shared drive. Simply copy the file, which is in your Word STARTUP folder and then email it or post it to your shared location.

Note: There may be other ways to automate distribution, such as creating a script that automatically downloads the latest building blocks whenever a user logs into the network. Talk to your IT department for help with something like this.

There is a caveat to this process. It demands that only one person at a time make revisions to the building blocks file. Be sure to define a process and protocols around who can revise the building blocks file, when, and how they will distribute the file once updates are made. Also, include a process for requesting building block updates. While this is a bit restrictive, it will not prevent users from using the blocks. They can plug in a building block and then edit the content. It’s just the process of writing the edits back to the library that needs to be managed.

If you’ve designed a custom ribbon for your building blocks, you can also export the configuration and distribute it to your authors so that they can quickly and easily enable the ribbon in their environments.

Sharing the Custom Ribbon Configuration

Rather than each author going through the steps of configuring the same custom ribbon, you can export your configuration which can then be imported by the other authors. Please note that if they’ve made other configuration changes, those changes may be overwritten when importing the new settings.

To import or export Word configuration:

1.   Select File > Options.

2.   On the Word Options dialog:

a.   Click Customize Ribbon in the pane on the left.

b.   Use the Import/Export button. The default name of the exported file is Word Customizations.exportedUI.

3.   Email the exported file or place it in a shared location for your authors to download.

The recipients of the file will follow the same steps to import the configuration file.

Build Documents Faster than Ever Before

Now that you know how to create, manage, and insert building blocks, you can build a library of content assets for you and your team that will reduce or even eliminate redundant content creation and further the mission of consistency. 

You also now know how to maximize these benefits with a custom ribbon that makes building block usage easy and intuitive for even the most novice Word users. Heck, you can even build ribbons and assets for different purposes. For example, you could create an engineering ribbon with design-focused assets, a project management ribbon with PM-related assets, and a proposal ribbon with marketing assets.   

Finally, you can reduce editing time and potential errors related to content reuse by coupling building blocks with custom properties. The powerful combination provides the one-two punch needed to streamline leveraging your content.

Make sure you check out the rest of the Harnessing the Power of Microsoft Word series:

1.    Getting Started
2.    Creating & Accessing Templates
3.    Creating Paragraph & Character Styles
4.    Building Numbered Styles
5.    Creating & Managing Custom Properties
6.    Inserting Dynamic Cross-References
7.    Using Building Blocks