How to use the template plugin?

Help
1

Paying customer here, excited to see there’s a Template plugin now!

But when I go to Help, I see no reference to it in the list of plugins on the sidebar and in the ‘list of plugins’ article. I downloaded the latest version of the installer manually, and I still don’t see any reference to the Template Plugin. I do see an option to use a template on the right sidebar (yay!). But of course it doesn’t do anything since there are no templates.

2

In the settings, when you click on the template plugin, it let’s you define a folder where your templates are located - it explicitly tells you that all files in this chosen folder will be available as templates. Actually I guess this is somehow self-explanatory…

Or did I misinterpret your problem?

3

thanks, got it! I have a section for the folder name in my settings and adding that did the tick. Still would be nice to have info in the Help section so maybe they could add that in future?

1 Like
4

Hello, what I feel is missing are a documentation about available placeholders. It would be amazing to also have some examples of templates.

à bientôt
Frank

3 Likes
5

I think placeholders are a completely different topic that doesn’t necessarily have to do with templates as such… But yes, an overview somewhere of what placeholders work in obsidian could be quite useful!

2 Likes
6

Is there an explanation anywhere of how templates work? I was assuming that I could use them to create new notes, but cant find any mention on the forum or in the documentation.

The only control I can find is the ‘insert template’ button in the left toolbar, and that just inserts text from the selected template into the current note. Is that how they are supposed to work? If so I’d equate this feature to a snippet rather than a template.

7

Currently yes, I think. To be honest, I haven’t thought so much about templates by now - I use them for saving time when writing notes that follow a routinized or default pattern.

For example, when writing literature reviews, you could establish a template like this:

tags: 
***

# Title of the book/article

## Metadata

## Abstract

## Important citations

## Own thoughts

## Related topics / notes

or something similar… This would guarantee that you have your literature notes all structured in the same way, which means that

  1. you can save some time as you don’t have to write all the headings again each time,
  2. it makes searching and linking easier (especially with the ability to link to subheadings of a note).

So maybe templates could have some more powerful use cases but - again - I haven’t thought about other potential use cases so far.

How do others use templates?

Btw, I just realized that you first have to create a new note, then change to edit mode and only then can insert a template (as this, in my quite limited use case, was my working flow anyway so far, I haven’t missed another opportunity yet) - is that right?

There’s no such thing like “create new note from template”, right?

1 Like
8

Thanks yes, that confirms my thinking as well. I went looking for ‘create new note from template’ because that’s what I’m used to. But it doesn’t appear to be the way that these templates work. Which is fine, now I know.

9

You might want to contact the devs to manually add the Insider / Supporter / VIP badges to your forum and discord accounts.

1 Like
10

I can’t seem to find where I can designate the Template folder. What am I missing? Appreciate the help.

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11

You should click on Plugin Options at the bottom and the click on ‘Templates’

12

:roll_eyes: i feel like an idiot now. thank you! first timer here and very excited to get mine set up

1 Like