What Goes in a Newsletter

Almost every newsletter, whatever the organization, is assembled from the same parts:

• Masthead — the title block at the top: newsletter name, organization, issue number, and date. Keep it identical every issue; readers recognize it before they read it.
• Lead story — the most important item, top left, with the largest headline. If everything looks equally important, nothing gets read.
• Secondary stories — two or three shorter items beneath or beside the lead.
• Recurring sections — dates for the diary, a spotlight on a person or team, notices, reminders. Readers learn where these live and go straight to them.
• Images with captions — captions are read more often than body text, so use them to carry information rather than repeating the obvious.
• Contact footer — who produced it, how to get in touch, and how to submit something for the next issue.

A Newsletter Layout

The standard arrangement — masthead across the top, a two-column body, and a sidebar for the recurring items:

Three things this layout gets right. The lead story is visually dominant, so the eye lands there first. The sidebar holds everything date-driven in one place, which is what most parents actually open the newsletter for. And the footer tells readers how to contribute — the single most effective way to stop a newsletter becoming one person’s unpaid second job.

Free Newsletter Templates in MS Word

Each template below is editable in Word — replace the masthead with your organization’s name, swap in your own stories and photos, and print or save as PDF.

School Newsletter Template

Masthead with issue number and date, a two-column story area, and a sidebar for term dates and reminders — sized for a single printed page.

Staff Newsletter Template

An internal-communications layout with space for a leadership note, team updates, and a people section for joiners, movers, and milestones.

Corporate Business Newsletter Template

A branded layout with logo space, a feature article area, and secondary columns — for customer and stakeholder newsletters distributed as PDF or print.

How to Build a Newsletter in Word

1. Start with the masthead. Insert a table with one row, or a text box across the top, and put the newsletter name, organization, issue number, and date inside it. Build it once and it carries to every issue.
2. Set up columns for the body — Layout ? Columns ? Two or Three. To keep the masthead full width, select only the body text first and choose “Apply to: Selected text,” or insert a continuous section break beneath the masthead.
3. Use text boxes for the sidebar (Insert ? Text Box). Text boxes float independently of the column flow, which is what you want for dates and notices that shouldn’t move when a story grows.
4. Insert photos with text wrapping set to Square (click the image ? Layout Options ? Square). The default “In Line with Text” fights the column layout.
5. Use a small table for the calendar section — two columns, date and event. Far easier to keep aligned than tabs or spaces.
6. Add a page border if you want one — Design ? Page Borders. Keep it thin; heavy borders eat the margin you need for readable columns.
7. Save a master copy before filling it in, and save each issue under its own name. Next month you start from the empty master, not from last month’s stories.
8. Export as PDF (File ? Save As ? PDF) for anything you send electronically. It keeps your layout intact on machines that don’t have your fonts.

What to Put In It

School newsletters. Parents read them for dates, so put the calendar somewhere fixed and obvious. Beyond that: what classes have been working on, staff news, reminders about kit and equipment, achievements, and anything requiring a response with its deadline in bold. Keep it to one page — a two-page school newsletter loses most of its readers on page one.

Staff and internal newsletters. These fail when they’re all announcements from the top. The ones people actually read mix organizational news with things about colleagues: joiners and leavers, work anniversaries, a team explaining what they do, a project that finished. Include something not everyone already knows.

Club, community, and congregation newsletters. Dates, results, minutes in summary, volunteer requests with specific asks (“two people to help set up on Saturday morning” works far better than “volunteers needed”), and contact details for committee members.

Customer and business newsletters. One genuinely useful item beats three promotional ones. Product news is fine; product news alone is why newsletters get binned.

Whatever the type, pick a frequency you can actually sustain. A monthly newsletter that appears monthly is worth more than a weekly one that stops in March.

Print, PDF, or Email?

These Word templates are built for print and PDF, and that’s a deliberate distinction worth understanding before you start.

Word gives you precise control over a printed page — columns, margins, image placement, page borders — and a PDF export that looks identical on every machine. That’s exactly right for newsletters going home in school bags, onto noticeboards, or out as an email attachment.

It is not right for email newsletters sent as HTML. Pasting a Word document into an email client produces heavy, non-standard markup that breaks in many inboxes and rarely survives on a phone. If your newsletter is going out in the body of an email, use a dedicated email tool with proper responsive templates. The two jobs look similar and the underlying technology isn’t.

The practical middle ground, used by most schools and clubs: design in Word, export to PDF, and attach the PDF to a short email that summarizes the headlines. Readers get the layout, and nothing breaks.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make a newsletter in Microsoft Word?

Build a masthead across the top, set the body to two or three columns under a continuous section break, use text boxes for sidebars, and insert photos with text wrapping set to Square. Or start from one of the templates above and replace the placeholder content.

Can I use a Word newsletter template for email?

Only as a PDF attachment. Word documents don’t convert well into HTML email — the markup breaks in many email clients and rarely displays properly on phones. For newsletters sent in the body of an email, use a dedicated email platform instead.

How long should a newsletter be?

One page for schools, clubs, and most internal newsletters; two at the most for organizations with more to report. Length isn’t the measure — readership is, and it drops sharply after the first page.

What should a school newsletter include?

Term dates and upcoming events in a fixed position, class and staff news, achievements, reminders about kit or equipment, and anything needing a parent response with its deadline clearly marked. Put the calendar where parents can find it without reading anything else.

How often should a newsletter go out?

Whatever you can maintain — monthly suits most schools and clubs, weekly only where there’s genuinely weekly news. A predictable schedule matters more than frequency, because readers stop looking for something that arrives irregularly.

How do I add columns to only part of a Word document?

Select the text you want in columns, go to Layout ? Columns ? More Columns, choose the number, and set “Apply to: Selected text.” Word inserts section breaks automatically, leaving your masthead full width above the columns.

Pete Smith

Pete Smith is a Business Management graduate and a passionate advocate for practical, accessible resources that empower professionals and entrepreneurs to succeed. With a strong foundation in organizational strategy and operational efficiency, Pete combines academic knowledge with real-world insights to simplify complex business processes. He is the creator behind a growing online platform dedicated to offering free, high-quality documents, templates, and actionable tips designed to save time and improve productivity.

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