Add Custom Template to Saved Templates in Illustrator

I just wanted to add that there is one more aspect to this and it is a major reason why "make your own template folder and use Command + Shift + 'N'" isn't the perfect solution. For me, I'll for get i set these template up too and forget to use ⌘ + ⇧+ N. I want templates for all the A-series and B-series paper sizes bigger than A3 which is all AI bothers to include these days (sis they used to have A1 or am i thinking of ID?).


The alternative of saving as Print or Web user preset document sizes is very problematic for me too:

If you open one of the Print, Web, Film and Video, etc etc .ai files in the `Support Files/New Document Profiles/en_US folder you'll see an interesting thing. It will open with only one size visible, say the NTSC 840 x 432 pixels video template and none of the others are visible.

But if you select the Page tool (⇧+ P) you can navigate through all the other Film and Video document sizes — the relevant templates for resizing the "page"/canvas come up in a drop down menu. It must all be happening under the hood, because while we can add or own .ai files to the same folder and they will appear at the bottom of the New Docs dialogue after clicking "Show all presets" and in my case 3 or 4 restarts of AI (if I'm lucky!), but they wont ever come up in the drop down menu of presets (see screen shots).

Another problem is it's really random — for me at least — as to when copying an .ai fie into that Support Files/… folder (you'll need admin privilege using sudo in Terminal or entering password for an admin account in Finder). An even worse problem is once the file appears in the Print or Web "show all Presets" dialogue (seems to inherit properties from the print.ai or web.ai) … deleting the file doesn't remove the preset from the offerings. OMG this is annoying.

Where to save them (i think).

This list of preset sizes is populated under the hood and not from the .ai documents in the New Document Profiles folder.

I did eventually get AO info the Print Presets tab (yay!), ithis A0 file was a re-save of my edits to the original Print.ai document that ships with Illustraor, presumably that's where it inherited it's assignment to the Print tab, otherwise no idea how AI assigns these to Print and Web tab rather than the Saved or whatevr Tab (make a new User Preset Profiles tab Adobe!!). It has correct dimension and units I want by default (mm):

Almost 2 years on since you're original post and we're still in the same situation. Seems crazy to me that personalised templates can't be saved in the 'saved' section.