Greetings and welcome to the community forum!
Eric Sullivan wrote:Hi, I am not a natural user of Templates and Wixards I usually give up and start with a blank sheet.
Same here. This is pretty much my recommendation, too: skip the wizard and just make your own template from scratch.
Right at the start of the wizard, it says: "This wizard helps you to create a letter template. You can then use the template as the basis for writing letters as often as desired."
There's nothing magic about templates. Imagine that you wanted to write your first letter ever, so you start OO and start a new document, type in all the information, format it, and print it. Done. Then, the next time you need to write a letter, instead of starting from scratch, you open the old letter, replace the text that has to change, save it as a new name, and poof, you've saved a lot of time. That's all a template does--it's just a plain document that has all the content and formatting that you want to start out with.
The ONLY thing that's different with a template is that, when you open it, OO starts a new, untitled document, instead of editing the template itself.
Once you create a document from a template, the template itself has no more effect on the document; there's no magic effects of the template on the document; it's just a starting point.
The letter wizard collects your choices and creates a template for you. The resulting template is a rather complex document, using a number of advanced features. When you need to customize it, it's hard to see what to do, especially for a beginner. There's something to be said for just starting from scratch and making your own template. It wouldn't be as flashy, but you know what's in it and how it works.
Anyway, you can make a new template from any open document using File > Templates > Save ...
You can start a document from a template using File > New > Templates and Documents > ...
If you have a template you want to change, use File > Templates > Edit ...
Is there a way, having got the basic design from the wizard, that I can unlock the whole thing and put in what I want?
Right. So you can use File > Templates > Edit ... to open and edit the template created by the wizard. It's just a regular document so you can do anything you want to it.
You can also just start over with a blank page and make your own template, using nothing but plain text. As long as you don't need a fancy layout, the wizard doesn't help all that much and the fancy features in the wizard's template are not necessary.