Using a Word template can help structure your meeting minutes.
Many meetings need a record of the discussion that takes place along with any actions that need to be taken after the meeting is adjourned. An organized set of meeting minutes reminds the participants of what needs to be done and gives those absent an idea of what occurred. Since meetings often do not follow an exact agenda, getting your minutes organized can be time consuming. To help structure your meeting minutes, you can use one of Microsoft Word’s templates. Templates provide a predetermined structure to help your organize your meeting notes quickly.
Instructions
1. Gather together your notes, a list of the people attending the meeting and their contact information. You will also need a list of the people absent from the meeting and their contact information. Often meeting notes are sent to others who are impacted by the meeting results. Ask your supervisor who else needs to receive the meeting notes.
2. Open Microsoft Word. Click on the Microsoft Office Button in the upper left-hand corner of the Ribbon. When a new dialog box appears, scroll down under the left Templates task pane and then click on Minutes. The middle task pane changes to show you all the meeting minute templates you can use.
3. Double-click on the Meeting Minutes template for this example. The minutes template section contains several templates to help organize your information including informal and PTA minutes templates. You can always choose a template that meets your individual needs. Once you double-click, the template is downloaded from Office Online.
4. Highlight Meeting Title and type in your text. Press the tab key to go to the next field and type in your information. Continue filling in your information by pressing the tab key and typing in your information. All templates are guides to follow. If you do not have a text for a section of the template, highlight the text field and press delete.
5. Save your file by clicking on the Microsoft Office Button and Save. Type in a file name and click Save again. If the minutes template was created with a previous version of Office, you will need to click on OK to save the document. This saves the document to the current Word version format and will not change your document.
6. Print your document by clicking on the Microsoft Office Button and Print. Click OK to print your document.
Tips Warnings
If you need to send your minutes to several people via email and you do not know which version of Word they have, you can also save your minutes as a portable document format (PDF) file from Word. Click on the Microsoft Office Button and then select Save As. Click on PDF or XPS and then type in a name for your file. Click Publish to save the file as a PDF file and attach the PDF version of your file to an email message.
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