When you start up Publisher, you should see a list of templates displayed, with a navigation bar for the different types of publications on the left. This is a great way to get started, because even if you’re not particularly enamored with any of the styles and designs, you can easily get the layout you want and make changes to the design later. We’ll do the business cards first because they’re easier. After you choose a template, the customization wizard appears. This is a very handy little wizard that asks for your personal information, and then auto-populates it onto your publication. And what’s really nice about it is the fact that it saves this information, so that when you open Publisher three months from now and pick a template, all of your personal information will be populated into the publication again, so you won’t have to always type in your name, address, phone, etc.

What’s great about Publisher is that it is a totally graphical environment, and everything you see on the screen is an object. So when you see your name on the left and your address on the right, you are actually seeing two separate text box objects that contain text. In fact, if you see a colored background, when you click on it you’ll find it’s just an object too, a filled-in rectangle. This allows total flexibility in placement of graphics and text. I can rearrange the placement of any of the text boxes or graphics very easily. One of the cute things about Publisher that is still present in the later versions is the little moving van icon. This appears when you point at the edges of a text box or anywhere on a graphic, indicating that you can move the object. I don’t have to worry about anchoring a graphic or changing the picture format like I do in Word; I can simply put it where I want and it’s done.

Because Publisher is such a graphical environment, it has some features that will help you draw and arrange objects neatly in your publications. You should notice blue margin lines on your business cards. In addition, you can add guidelines both horizontally and vertically to help you position your objects. The easiest way to add guidelines is to simply point at your vertical ruler, hold the shift key, and then click and drag to the right. You can use the same procedure for the horizontal ruler, just drag down. Guidelines will be green in color, and you can add as many as you want, wherever you want in your workspace. Not only does this save a lot “eyeballing time,” but it helps to position your objects faster as guidelines have a kind of magnetism to them, and whenever an object is near, it “snaps” to the guideline. If you ever want to temporarily disable this magnetic behavior, hold the ALT key when moving an object. ALT is a very handy way of precisely moving an object. I also use guidelines for centering. If you want to center text across only a portion of the card, then make the text box stretch to the left and right guidelines and then center the text within. This is a much easier method than trying to line it up visually under other objects.

Printing business cards is very tricky in Word. In Publisher, the process is a little more simplified (but you should still do a test print with regular paper first!). If you have your handy-dandy task pane open, and you are viewing the business card options pane, you simply select multiple under the copies per sheet heading. Now if you see a different header for your task pane, you may be able to change it to business card options by clicking on the little drop down arrow in between the name of the task pane and the X to close it. If that is not listed as an option, you must do it the hard way. Choose Print from the File menu, then click on the Change Copies Per Sheet button in the lower left hand corner. From there, choose the radio button at the top labeled Print Multiple Copies per Sheet. Sounds simple enough, right? Only if you happen to have the very strange default multiple card layout. If you have the much more common layout of two across, 5 down, then you’ll have to adjust the settings. This is where it’s a very good idea to do those test printouts before you waste the more expensive business card paper. As a general guideline, a side margin of .75,” a top margin of .5” and no horizontal nor vertical gaps should do the trick for most of the common layouts. It has always been a bit of a mystery to me why Publisher doesn’t have the Avery numbers as a choice for this layout.

On to Brochures! Brochures are very easy to do in Publisher, as all of the layout settings for the three panels are automatically set up for you. I really am getting used to the task pane, and for brochures it gives you some great options like including a customer address section to make it a mailer and setting up a sign-up form on one of the inside panels. You have to remember that you’re dealing with two sides, and to switch from side-to-side you need to click on the 1 and 2 numbered pages at the bottom of the screen (even now I occasionally find myself trying to scroll down to get to the other side!). A great feature of Publisher is a trick called auto-flow, which allows you to connect two separate text boxes that contain one block of text. It’s great for newsletters, when you want to start an article on one page and finish it four pages later. Why am I telling you all this when we’re discussing brochures? Well, because it’s usually more of a nuisance than a help when making brochures. When I create brochures, I get most of the text from either a website or document that contains the information I want to include. When I go to copy and paste, the Auto-flow dialog pops up and it tries to put the rest in another text box. Usually, you will want to either format the text to fit, or put the rest somewhere else on your own. If this is the case, then you want to select No to this dialog and fix it afterwards. Whenever you see the A… button in the right hand corner of a selected text box, it means that there is more content than the current size of the text box can show. So you size it until the little A… disappears. I find extra paragraph returns at the end of the text can make these appear as well, but be careful to check it out, because if there is extra text there that you can’t see, it won’t print.

If you are going to print your brochure on your own printer, then you’ll want to print just the first page, load the page back into the printer paper tray and then print the second page (it goes without saying that you will go through a couple of test pages figuring out how to load it right!). If you have a duplex printer (prints both sides), then you will want to choose the Flip on Short Edge radio button in the Printer’s properties, from the print dialog box.

And don’t forget to use guidelines when working on your brochures. They make it very easy to place the text boxes in the proper positions within the panels.

Well, that’s about it for tips on creating business cards and brochures in Publisher. Have fun being totally creative in this graphic-friendly application!