As this is a frequently asked SharePoint question I get, I'm going to try and answer it as succinctly as possible. And as I'm a fan of screenshots (a picture is worth a 1000 words as they say), I'm going to use them as much as possible, to limit how much I have to type. :-)

Business Requirement

Your business needs to configure a document library to use your standard company templates, to create new documents such as Formal Letterhead, Fax Cover Sheets and other 'pre-baked' templates.

The Solution – Apply Custom Content Types to a Document Library

There are a couple of steps necessary, to make this happen:

Note that I'm not going to cover customized views or adding metadata (columns) to either the document library or to the Content Types themselves, however, you should note that you can do so much more, to customize your document library and extend it with Content Types, than simply specifying a template to use. And there are several ways to skin this particular cat, but I'm going to provide the quick and dirty approach so you can get back to whatever else you may need to get done.

1. Give some thought to *where* these templates are going. Are you about to place them in the appropriate site and/or document library? Have you planned this out effectively? Do you need to reuse this template in another site (this would also establish what site you create the content type in; the root, a top level site or just within a single sub site)
2. Establish/Prepare your Document Templates and tuck them in a folder somewhere, ready for upload to your site as the base templates (Leave them in their standard file types, such as a Word .DOC file - they don't need to be .DOT template files like they would if they were launched in Word). Better still (and too many steps to cover here), store them in a dedicated 'Document Template Library) and then link to the URL's, instead of uploading them
3. Create your Content Types within the site they will be used, or in the site above (perhaps the top level site collection, if you want to 'reuse' the content types in sub sites)
4. Configure your document library to 'manage content types'
5. Plug in (add) your content types

That's it. Now, for the walkthrough version of the answer…

Here's the final result when done

Why not start with the end result, to help clarify what we are intending to accomplish/build here.

There it is. With some immediate business benefits, including:

• The ability for you to provide a list of *branded templates* that users can select from *anywhere*
• By starting with the template, in the document library, when you click save it will want to store it right back in the library saving the whole 'browsing/Save As (or gasp! Upload) process'

On to the walkthrough…

1. Have your templates ready

I.e. do the prep work so you aren't mucking about with design when you should be mucking in SharePoint :)

2. Create your Content Types

Choose Site Actions, Site Settings to get to your Sites Content Type Gallery. (Note: placement of these Content Types can be important. If you want to reuse them in other sites, be sure they are at the top level site of where they might be need, which is often the root site collection).

Choose Site Content Types and then click 'Create'

Complete all the necessary fields to create the Content Type

• Give it a useful name as this will appear in the dropdown list (no need to put "new" in front, as they library will do that for you)
• Give it a meaningful description, possibly with important instructions on the documents storage, use and disposal as this will appear under the name providing guidance for your users
• Choose an appropriate Parent Content Type (often you'll choose 'Document')
• Bind them to a group so they are easy to find/categorize. In the example above, I'm adding them to the 'itgroove Content Types', however, if you haven't created such a group yet, use the 'New Group' option

Now you will want to attach your Document Template to the Content Type. To do this, choose Advanced Settings.

Choose Upload a New Document Template and browse to where you stored your prepared Document Templates (or if you have stored your Templates in a dedicated Document Library, you'll enter a link to the template instead using the 'Enter a URL' option)

Also, you should probably mark the Content Type as Read Only to protect it from the odd oopsie. By doing this, you'll need to remove the 'Read Only' flag before making changes, causing you to 'pause and think' about the ramifications of your change, which is never a bad thing. :-)

3. Configure your Document Library to allow management of Content Types

Now go to your Document Library (or libraries, you can reuse these things you know, and nobody says you can't use more than one document library – heck, I have lots of them meeting lots of different business requirements, differing version history needs, etc.)

In the Document Libraries General Settings, choose 'Advanced Settings'

Set the 'Allow Management of Content Types' option to "Yes"

4. Plug in your Content Types

Once you have enabled the ability to manage Content Types in your document library, you'll see a new 'Content Types' section appear. In it, will be the default Document Content Type that you chose when you created the Document Library in the first place (you know, that dropdown that said "Select a document template to determine the default for all new files created in this document library").

What we want to do here is 'Add' more Content Types, our defined Content Types.

So, choose 'Add from existing site content types', then select your group you created (or the built in group you might have decided to store them in)…

Then select the types you want to launch from this document library and choose 'Add'.

As above, you'll see the new one's appear in the Content Types list now and as per below, once you have them all added, yours will look something like this.

Some final notes/recommendations

• Store your document templates in the format that best fits the needs of your organization. If you have a mix of Word 2003 and Word 2007 software out there, save your templates in 2003 format, so that everyone can use the templates. Saving them as .docx (2007) will limit who succeeds with using these templates
• You can change the order of the Content Types in the list/dropdown and you can even hide the standard/plain "Document" type so they can't create any blank documents (we don't want no stinking blank documents…). To do this, choose the "Change new button order and default content type
• Finally, many people don't know this but you can actually change which templates appear in the "New" list, on a folder by folder basis (another reason you may not abandon folders altogether). Look for this option (see below), by hiding the templates that shouldn't appear…