Libreoffice 3 listed the available templates in a detail list which was perfect. Version 4 only lists the templates in icon format which is terrible and makes it much harder to find the template. How can I change it from icons to detail list? Thanks.
You can’t at present. Bug fdo#63256 is the related report for this issue. I think the change to icons was made to support touch devices, but it has certainly degraded desktop usability.
Not everyone would agree, but I think that a list of the styles defined in the template would be much more useful than a thumbnail or icon presenting the template’s first page(s). Many templates have no content at all, depending on whether they are meant to be used as content templates or as style sheets. This distinction is analogous to e.g. PHP templates and CSS documents in a WordPress theme.