Word includes three basic document types: blank documents, notebooks, and publications. Each of these has a special purpose, view, and toolset.

You can take the effort out of creating sophisticated documents by using one of the predefined templates from Word as a starting point. You can also create your own templates.

Word publications are professionally designed publishing projects for which text content is laid out in text boxes on individual pages. You work with Word publications in Publishing Layout view, which provides special tools for working with the page layout. You can open a publication in another view, and you can open standard documents in Publishing Layout view.

Word notebooks are specialized documents in which you can record and organize various types of information, including typed and handwritten notes, drawings, images, and audio clips. You work with Word notebooks in Notebook Layout view. You can’t open a non-notebook document in Notebook Layout view. You can convert a regular document to a notebook, but some formatting might be lost.