The template editor

The Template Editor is where a template is designed. This page covers creating one, the four regions of the editor, and the two tools you will lean on most while authoring: the live preview and find and replace.

Create a template

A template is anchored to a single base object (for example Account, Opportunity, or any custom object). Every document the template generates is for one record of that object.

Open the Template Library and click New template. A New template dialog opens with two starting points: Start blank, or one of a gallery of ready-made starters shown underneath it, each with a small drawn preview of its actual layout, its base object, and a short description.

To start blank:

1. Click Start blank.
2. Fill in the Template Name (this becomes part of the generated file name; names are unique across the org, case-insensitive), the Base Object, and an optional Description, right there in the dialog.
3. Click Create Template. Sliick Docs creates the template and its first draft version automatically, and opens the editor on that draft.

To start from a ready-made design instead, see Starting from the gallery.

Note: the base object cannot be changed after creation. If you need a different base object, create a new template. A published template’s Source Type, meaning whether it is designed in the editor or uploaded as a Word file, is fixed in the same way. A save that would change either is refused with an explanation of what it would break, because every release already published was compiled against them.

Editor anatomy

The Template Editor has four regions:

• Top bar: Save, Generate proof, Preview, Publish, undo and redo, history drawer, test record picker, and find and replace.
• Left rail: the Blocks palette and a dedicated, searchable Merge fields panel.
• Designer canvas: the page being authored. A Body / Header / Footer switcher chooses which surface you are editing, and blocks can be reordered by dragging them on the canvas.
• Right rail: four tabs, Block, Page, Template, and E-sign, so you only ever see the settings relevant to what you have selected. Settings are grouped into collapsible cards that remember how you left them. E-sign is a tab in its own right, so signer roles and field placement are one click away instead of a scroll.

A sticky status bar along the bottom of the editor shows at a glance whether the template is valid; click a warning to jump straight to the block that needs attention.

On the canvas, each block’s controls (move, duplicate, delete, wrap) appear on hover or select rather than sitting permanently above every block, so what you are building reads like a document. Blocks can be dragged between sections, tables and columns can be resized directly on the canvas, dashed guides show approximately where the PDF will break across pages, and a zoom control adjusts the view. Deleting a block offers an Undo for as long as undoing is unambiguous.

Every change is tracked in a document-level undo and redo history (Cmd / Ctrl + Z, and Cmd / Ctrl + Shift + Z), and each editing surface keeps its own history.

Note: if you open the same draft in two browser tabs, the editor notices and warns you before one tab’s save overwrites the other’s work. It compares the draft’s actual content rather than the clock, so ordinary actions like generating a proof or saving signature placement never raise a false alarm.

The inline formatting toolbar

When you select a text, heading, table cell, callout, or other styleable block, a toolbar pins itself above the canvas.

Control	Acts on	What it does
Font family	Whole block	Combobox: Arial / Helvetica / Times New Roman / Courier New (the four fonts the native Salesforce PDF engine supports).
Font size	Per-run or next-typed	Numeric input plus chevron. Type any value 6 to 96 pt, or open the popover for a vertical slider plus preset chips (8 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 14 / 16 / 18 / 24 / 36 / 48 / 72 pt).
B / I / U / S	Per-run or next-typed	Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough. Hidden on heading blocks. Shortcuts: Cmd / Ctrl + B / I / U.
Align L / C / R / J	Whole block	Left, centre, right, justify.
Line spacing	Whole block	Default / 1.0 / 1.15 / 1.5 / 2.0.
A (text colour)	Per-run or next-typed	Letter over a coloured bar showing the active colour. Opens a swatch picker with brand and theme references, hex fallback, and Clear.
H (highlight)	Per-run or next-typed	The same picker pattern for background highlight.

The per-run controls work in two modes: highlight a range first then click a control (Selection mode), or with just a caret click a control to arm it (Toggle-then-type mode). Active, Mixed and Off states reflect the selection, so a Mixed underline button means part of the selection is underlined and part is not.

Hyperlinks are made from the same toolbar: turn text or a merge-field chip into a link, and the URL may contain merge-field placeholder tokens, for example https://help.example.com/account/{{Account.Id}}, which resolve per record.

Pick a test record

Every draft needs a test record so proofing and the live preview can render against real data.

1. In the top bar, click the Test record picker.
2. Pick any record on the base object. Use a record with realistic data, including any parent lookups or child collections you reference.

The selection is saved with the template and reused across draft sessions. Picking a test record is a prerequisite for publishing.

Live canvas preview

With a test record selected, the canvas previews real merged values as you author: field chips show the evaluated data rather than field-name labels, conditional branches render selectively against the test record, and aggregates run against the full child collection. An amber nudge bar appears when no test record is set. The preview refreshes when you save.

A repeat draws the rows the document will actually contain, in the order they will print, and only the rows that survive the repeat’s filter, so preview and the generated document agree. Where a collection is large enough that the preview samples it rather than drawing all of it, it says so instead of quietly understating the count. When a repeat shows nothing, the preview says which of three things happened: the collection is empty, the filter matched no rows, or the relationship does not exist.

Find and replace

Open find and replace from the top bar to search the text in a template and replace it in place, stepping through each match with an option to match case. Matches are highlighted on the canvas and the canvas scrolls to the active match. It is a quick way to update a product name, a legal phrase, or boilerplate across a longer template. Find indexes body text and headings.