Format Microsoft Word Documents

This topic will walk you through how to format Microsoft Word documents.

Build Signature Blocks

We recommend building your signature blocks in a table. There are a few guidelines we recommend you follow when you create your signature blocks:

• Create separate columns for the title and the value. For example, Date and 11/7/2019 are in separate columns.
• Add a row at the top of the table that labels each side as Your Company or Your Counterparty.
• Merge the first two cells in the top row so the title cell covers two columns.
• Do not underline your cells. If you’d like to add block lines, check out Advanced Formatting.
• Align all of the values to the bottom left of the cell.
• Remove all borders from your table.

Advanced Signature Block Formatting

You can implement a few advanced formatting practices to further customize your signature block:

• Add a bottom border to the value cells. This adds a line below the value of each value cell, replicating a line to sign on.
• Add a buffer column between the company and counterparty content. If you add a bottom line to your value cell, this column acts as a buffer between where the line ends and where the value of the next cell begins.
• Add labels below each line. For each row where you want to add a label, add an extra row below the value cells and insert a row. Align the text to the top left.

Whitespace Between Conditions

When you add multiple conditional clauses within one template, white spacing gaps often occur. To remove unwanted white space, start by downloading the template from Workflow Designer. Reach out to our Success team (success@ironcladapp.com) or Support (support@ironcladapp.com) if you have unwanted white space in your contracts.

1. Click the Workflow Designer tab.
2. Click the workflow configuration you want to edit.
3. Click the Create tab.
4. Click Edit mode.
5. Cut and paste the start of the condition next to the [endif] of the previous condition. Check out the images above to see what this looks like in practice.
6. Click Save.

Strip Font and Size Formatting

Sometimes conditional language shows up with a font and/or size that is different from the rest of the template.

Strip Tags of Formatting

1. Click the Workflow Designer tab and then click the workflow configuration you want to modify.
2. Click the Document tab.
3. Click the Download icon and save the document.
4. Find the condition tag with the affected language. Tags are always surrounded by square brackets [] and condition tags in particular start with [if:condition].
5. Highlight the tags before and after the affected language i.e.[if:condition…] and [endif].
6. Strip the tags’ formatting using the Clear All Formatting button on Word’s Home tab.
7. Save the document.
8. In Ironclad, click the Document tab of your workflow configuration. Click the three stacked dots located next to the Download icon.
9. Click Upload and Replace.

Modify Global Styles

Ironclad’s text replacements can cause unwanted formatting changes because they can trigger Microsoft Word’s global styles, which are often different than the desired formatting in the document. For example, the global style might be Courier font when you want Arial. Check out Microsoft’s documentation on how to modify global styles.

Headers and Footers

Headers and Footers can cause formatting issues, especially if they vary across templates in the same workflow. For example, if your MSA and SOW have different headers.

We recommended removing them from your templates entirely before uploading them into Workflow Designer. If you must have them, make them consistent across templates. This should keep formatting cleanup to a minimum! If you have headers and footers, make sure you do NOT Link to Previous.

Page Breaks and Sections Breaks

View Spaces, Paragraphs, Page Breaks, and Section Breaks

To view spaces, paragraphs, page breaks, and section breaks, click the Show / Hide Paragraphs button in the Home tab.

Insert Page Breaks

We recommend inserting a section break at the top of the template to ensure that the first-page header remains consistent. Check out Microsoft’s documentation on how to insert a section break. To maintain different formatting (or different headers and footers) in the document, use continuous section breaks.