Funeral Program Template for Word

The one Word setting that matters

A funeral program is a folded document, and folding is the thing Word hides best. The setting is called Book fold, and it does three jobs at once: it turns the page landscape, it divides the sheet into half-width pages, and it works out which page prints next to which so that the folded result reads in order. Doing any of that by hand, with columns or text boxes, is how an evening disappears.

On Windows it lives under Layout, then Margins, then Custom Margins, in the Multiple pages list. On a Mac the same choice is in the Document dialog under the Format menu. Word for the web does not have it at all, which is worth knowing before you start there.

With Book fold on, you write your program as four ordinary pages: cover, inside left, inside right, back. Word handles the rest. That is the entire trick, and everything below is just doing it carefully.

Set up a bi-fold in Word, step by step

1. 1

   Start from a blank document

   Not a downloaded template. A blank document has nothing in it that can jump, snap or overlap later.
2. 2

   Switch on Book fold

   Layout, then Margins, then Custom Margins. Set Multiple pages to Book fold and leave Sheets per booklet at All. Word flips the page to landscape on its own.
3. 3

   Set the margins and the gutter

   Half an inch on every side, and a gutter of 0.125 inches. The gutter is breathing room along the fold, so text does not run into the crease.
4. 4

   Make four pages

   Insert three page breaks. Page 1 is the front cover, pages 2 and 3 are the inside spread, page 4 is the back. Word prints them in imposed order; you never have to think about which panel shares a sheet with which.
5. 5

   Paste the text in

   The template below, or the fuller set from the free templates page. Replace the bracketed parts, then read every name aloud to someone else.
6. 6

   Add the photo

   Insert, then Pictures, on the cover page. Set Wrap Text to In Line with Text and center it. Details in the photo section below.
7. 7

   Export a PDF and look at it

   File, then Save As or Export, and choose PDF. Open the PDF and check every panel before anything is printed.

The text to paste in

Here is the cover and the order of service to get you moving. The free templates page has the complete set, including the obituary panel, the back panel, the Catholic Mass order, a tri-fold and a celebration of life, all as plain text you can copy in one tap.

The dotted leader lines are ordinary full stops, and it is fine to leave them ragged. If you want them tidy, a right-aligned tab stop with a dot leader does it properly: open the Tabs dialog from the paragraph settings, add a tab at the right margin, and choose the dotted leader. That is a five-minute detour and entirely optional.

Photos that stay where you put them

Almost every Word layout disaster in a funeral program is a floating picture. By default Word may place an inserted photo so that it floats over the text, anchored to a paragraph you cannot see. Edit a line two pages away and the photo lurches somewhere new.

The fix is one setting. Click the photo, open the Wrap Text options, and choose In Line with Text. The photo now behaves like a very large character: it sits in the text, moves with the text, and can be centered by centering its paragraph. For a program cover, which is a name, dates and one photograph stacked in the middle of the page, that is exactly the behavior you want.

Two more habits worth keeping: drag only the corner handles when you resize, because the side handles stretch faces, and start from the highest-resolution copy of the photo you can find rather than a screenshot. If the print comes out muddy, the photo was too small to begin with, and no amount of enlarging in Word will put detail back.

Booklets and tri-folds in Word

Booklets use the same Book fold setting. The only rule is that the page count must be a multiple of four, because each sheet carries four pages. Eight pages is one obituary, a full order of service and room for photos; if you are heading past twelve, think about whether a copy shop should be stapling it for you, and read the size guide for what fits where.

Tri-folds are a different animal. Book fold cannot make one; it only folds in half. The Word approach is a landscape page with three columns and column breaks between panels, the same workaround Google Docs uses. It works, but the panel order on the back of the sheet is genuinely confusing, and the format guide has the panel maps you will need. If the tri-fold matters to you, this is the point where a tool that imposes the panels for you earns its keep.

Printing it without surprises

Quantity, paper weight and where to print are their own subject, and the printing guide covers them, including what to ask a copy shop for by name.

When Word is the wrong tool for this week

Word is a fair choice when you know it well, the service is a few days away, and someone has the patience for one careful evening. The setup on this page is honest work and it produces a dignified program.

It is the wrong tool when the service is the day after tomorrow, when the person doing it does not live in Word, or when the obituary will be edited five more times by three more relatives after the layout is done, because every edit in Word risks the layout. That is the situation the guided builder exists for: you answer questions, the panels lay themselves out, and every edit re-fits the text automatically. Building and previewing costs nothing; you pay only if you download the finished print-ready PDF. If Word is doing the job for you, keep going with Word, and take the checklist above with you.