How it works
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Templates are Word documents with fields wrapped in curly braces — for example
{Client Name},
{COURT} or
{Claim No}.
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Field names can be anything, you can have as many as you want, and they can appear
anywhere in the document — including headers and footers.
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The text you enter is inserted exactly where the placeholder sits, keeping the font
and styling (bold, underline, etc.) from the template.
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Templates are stored as ordinary files in a folder you choose — nothing is sent to
bardoc. Pick a local folder to keep them on this device, or a synced folder (OneDrive,
iCloud Drive) to share them across machines.
1. Adding templates
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Click + Add Template in the sidebar and pick one or more
.docx or .dotx files.
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Or click Create Template and follow the prompts to build a
template from scratch inside bardoc.
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A few example templates are included to show what's possible — they appear under
Presets at the top of the list.
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Templates appear in the left-hand list. Use the search box above the list to filter by
name.
- Drag a template up or down to reorder it within its section.
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Right-click a template to rename it, edit it in Word, duplicate it, or delete it.
Hover a template and click the bin icon for a one-click delete. Presets cannot be
renamed.
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Keyboard: use ↑ / ↓ to
move through the list, Enter to open the highlighted
template, and Delete to delete it. Works directly from
the search box too — type to filter, then arrow down to the match.
2. Using a template
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Select a template from the sidebar. Its fields appear in the centre panel in the order
they appear in the document.
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The same field name can appear in the template more than once with different
capitalisation (for example {CLAIMANT} in a heading and
{Claimant} in the body). bardoc shows it as a single input
— what you type is inserted into both places.
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Any field whose name contains the word
Date (for example
{Date} or
{Hearing Date}) is pre-filled with today's date,
using the format chosen in Settings. You can overwrite it.
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The casing of what you type doesn't matter — the output follows the casing of the
field name in the template. So if the field is
{CLAIMANT} and you type "helena normanton", the
document shows HELENA NORMANTON. If the same field is
{Claimant} elsewhere, it shows
Helena Normanton.
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For a one-word field name, a multi-word value is capitalised word-by-word — so
{Document} with "witness statement" becomes
Witness Statement.
- Any field you leave blank will simply be empty in the generated document.
3. Generating the document
Choose how the file should be saved, then click
Generate Document:
- Save manually — opens the generated file so you can save it
from Word yourself.
- Choose folder & filename — shows a native save dialog so
you can pick a location and name in one step.
- Use default folder — saves straight into the folder set in
Settings using the filename you enter on the right.
4. Settings
- Default save folder — where generated documents are written
when you pick Use default folder.
- Default name — the value used to pre-fill any
{Name} field, so you don't have to type your own
name every time.
- Date format — how dates are written into any
Date field (e.g. 1 March 2026,
1st March 2026, 2026-03-01).
- Templates folder — choose where templates are stored on disk.
Point this at a OneDrive (or other cloud) folder to keep templates in sync across multiple
devices.
Tips
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Several small, specific templates with a handful of fields each are usually easier to
work with than one big template with lots of fields.
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Install bardoc on every device you work from (desktop, laptop, home machine) and point
all of them at the same cloud-linked templates folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google
Drive, etc) — your templates will stay in sync everywhere.
- Feedback and suggestions are welcome — they shape what gets built next.