How to setup up a Office Templates Library in SharePoint

Here is a guide how to setup up Office Template Library centrally from SharePoint Online.

Very useful especially in Cloud only environments.

 

Create a Office Template Library in Sharepoint

First we need to have a document library for our templates, in SharePoint Online

(If you already have organization asset libraries configured for hosting your images, you need to set up this library to same site collection.)

Go to the Microsoft Admin portal ,then select SharePoint

At Sites select Active sites, and then Create

At the Create a Site page, select Other options

At the Other option page;

Choose Document Center in the Choose a template drop down

At Site Name, give your site a name eg. Office templates

Copy the site address we need this later

at Choose a Primary administrator, Choose your admin account and Click Finish

Wait a minute or two, until the site is created, then navigate to the new site

 

Click at the gear icon, and Choose Site Settings

Then Choose Site permissions

Choose Grant Permissions

Type in Everyone except external users (or whatever it’s called in your language) and hit Share

Configure Library for Hosting Office Templates

Connect to Sharepoint Online

Here you need your Sharepoint tenant name, (you can see it in the address bar when you are in the SharePoint admin center)

Open a Powershell and use this command;

Connect-SPOService https://<tenant>-admin.sharepoint.com

Then authenticate whit your administrator account

Then type this command; (if your SharePoint site is in another language then edit the command so documents are translated to your language)

Add-SPOOrgAssetsLibrary -LibraryUrl https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/Officetemplates/Documents -OrgAssetType OfficeTemplateLibrary -CdnType Private

And type;

A

Now the Office Template Library is added in your tenant.

Copy Your Templates to the Library

Upload your templates to the Library. Remeber to upload in template format

Word = .dotx / .dotm

Excel = .xltx / .xltm

PowerPoint= .potx / .potm

It can take several hours beforre it works (Microsoft says up to 24Hours) But usually it works after an hour.

End user experience

After a while the Office Templates Library will be visible in your Office clients, and in online version of the programs from Office.com

Word:

Excel:

Link to Official Microsoft Documentation; Create an organization assets library – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs