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🎥 Using Document Templates

Light Blue’s Document Templates allow you to quickly create documents you may want to send to your client such as letters, detailed proposals or other paperwork. If needed they can also automatically populate information from Light Blue Records and should you want a different layout to the inbuilt Light Blue templates, they can also be used for financial documents such as quotes and invoices.

To learn more about how to do this watch the video below; though if you prefer to learn by words and pictures, have a read of the help article instead!

Creating a Document Template

  1. The first step is to create your Document Template in your word processor app. NB. Light Blue uses templates saved in Rich Text Format (RTF) so we recommend you use an app such as Microsoft Word or Open Office as Pages and TextEdit apps on macOS don’t save or display RTF documents properly.
  2. If you want specific Light Blue information to be included in your document you can use Mail-Merge Tags; these are different pieces of text with a % sign on either side which will be replaced with information from Light Blue allowing you to automatically personalise your document. Do make sure you type these into your document rather than copying and pasting as this can ‘break’ the merge. 👉 Here’s more information on Mail-Merge Tags and the full list of tags available.
  3. Once your document is complete, save it as an RTF file.

Importing the Document Template into Light Blue

  1. In the “Document Templates” section of Preferences click the “Add Record” button.
  1. In the dialog that appears, select the RTF file from your computer and Light Blue will import a copy of it.

Using a Document Template

  1. You can add Document Templates to any of Light Blue’s main Records such as Contacts, Shoots or Sales; simply go to the “Activity” tab in the Record, click the green “+“ button and select “Add Document From Template…” from the drop-down menu.
  1. Select the template that you want to use.
  1. Light Blue will then create a copy of the template, replacing the Mail-Merge Tags with the Record information and open it in your word processor app.

Editing an existing Document Template

  1. In the “Document Templates” section of Preferences select the template you want to edit and click the “Edit” button.
  1. When the template opens in your word processor app, make the required changes then save and close it; Light Blue will automatically update the Document Template. NB. Please use the “Save” command not “Save As”.
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