Creating Text-Based Publications in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007
- 8/15/2007
- Planning Longer Publications
- Creating Newsletters
- Organizing Content
- Editing and Proofing Content
- Key Points
Creating Newsletters
A newsletter is a periodic publication containing information of interest to a specific group—for example, employees of a company or members of a club or other organization. Newsletter recipients are frequently subscribers you track in a mailing list, rather than people you don’t know. Depending on the size of your subscription base and the amount and frequency of information in each newsletter, you might choose to deliver the content in a traditional printed format or in an electronic format, such as on a Web site or by e-mail.
Publisher 2007 includes over 60 preformatted newsletter designs. When creating a newsletter based on one of these templates, you can choose a one-page spread, appropriate for printing on separate sheets of paper, or a two-page spread, appropriate for a booklet-style publication. If you will distribute the newsletter by mail, you can designate a portion of the back page for mailing information. This area, which is designed to be visible when you fold the publication, includes areas for information about your organization, postage, and recipient details. To enter the recipient details, you can hand-write names and addresses, affix mailing labels, or merge the newsletter with a recipient list to create an individual publication for each recipient.
Copyfitting Text
When you customize the placeholder text in a newsletter that is based on a Publisher template, you will often find that your text does not fit the ready-made text boxes as neatly as the placeholder text did. When this happens, you can change the size of the text box, manually format the text to make it fit, or have Publisher automatically copyfit the text.
When you insert more text in a text box than can fit, one of the following three things happens:
If the text box is linked to another text box, the remaining text flows into the next text box.
If the text box is not linked to another text box and automatic copyfitting is turned off, the Text In Overflow icon appears, and the text size does not change.
If the text box is not linked to another text box and automatic copyfitting is turned on, the text size decreases until the text fits.
Copyfitting is turned on by default for some text boxes created as part of a Publisher design or layout template, such as those intended for headings. Copyfitting is turned off for general-use text boxes and those that you insert manually. You can turn copyfitting on or off for a selected text box by clicking an AutoFit Text option on the Format menu or by clicking the Text Autofitting option you want on the Text Box tab of the Format Text Box dialog box.
Inserting Pages
Newsletters are generally text-based but frequently contain other types of information. Publisher provides five standard newsletter page layouts: Story, Calendar, Order Form, Response Form, and Sign-Up Form. You can also insert a specified number of blank pages before or after the current page, or you can duplicate an existing page layout a specified number of times. (This option is particularly handy if you create your own page layouts.)
In this exercise, you will create a newsletter with a color scheme appropriate for photocopying. You will replace placeholder text, copyfit the text to the text boxes in which it appears, and add pages to accommodate the intended newsletter content. There is no practice file for this exercise.
In the Publication Types list, click Newsletters.
Scroll the list in the center pane to see the available newsletter templates. Then in the Classic Designs category, click Banded.
Under Customize in the right pane, set the Color scheme to Black & Gray and the Font scheme to Virtual.
Under Options, set the Page size to One-page spread, and select the Include customer address check box. Then click Create.
Publisher creates a four-page newsletter with all design elements, other than placeholder graphics, rendered in shades of black and gray.
Close the Format Publication task pane, and then set the Zoom level to Page Width.
The organization name from the active information set appears in the upper-left corner of this front page. Generic placeholders indicate where to insert the newsletter title and edition-specific information.
-
Click Newsletter Title, and type Technology Times. Click Newsletter Date, and type April 1, 2008. Then click Volume 1, Issue 1, and type Technical support at your fingertips!
Publisher displays the Text In Overflow indicator to signal that more text is in the selected text box than is shown.
-
On the Format menu, point to AutoFit Text, and then click Shrink Text On Overflow.
Publisher shrinks the text so that the entire slogan is now visible. However, it is very small.
-
Drag the right handle of the text box to the right until the text box overlaps the text box containing the date. Release the mouse button when the right edge of the selected text box is slightly to the left of the word April. Then click away from the box to see the results.
-
On the page sorter, click the Page 2 button to display page 2. Then scroll the page to view the placeholder content.
Placeholder stories within each set of linked text boxes provide useful information about newsletter design and content. The newsletter title you entered in step 7 appears in a text box at the bottom of the page.
-
Display page 3, and scroll to the top of the page.
The slogan you entered in step 6 is only partially visible in the text box in the upper-left corner of the page, because the text box is not wide enough to accommodate it.
-
Click the text box that contains the slogan, and drag the right handle to the right so that the text box fills the available space to the left of the text box containing the page number. Then on the Format menu, point to AutoFit Text, and click Best Fit.
The font size of the slogan text increases to fit the wider text box.
At the beginning of each story is the approximate number of words that fits in the set of linked text boxes. This estimate is based on the default font scheme for this template, which you changed before creating the publication.
-
Click anywhere in the first story on page 3.
Publisher selects the first text box in the story and displays the Go To Next Text Box button.
-
Click the Go to Next Text Box button.
Go to Next Text Box
Publisher selects the last text box in the story and displays the Go To Previous Text Box button and the Text In Overflow indicator. At the current font size, the placeholder text for this story does not fit in the space provided.
This newsletter will contain several lengthy stories, so you need to add pages to accommodate them.
-
On the Insert menu, click Duplicate Page.
Publisher inserts a new page 4 with the same layout as page 3.
-
On the Insert menu, click Page.
The Insert Newsletter Page dialog box opens.
-
Click the Available page types arrow to display the types of pages you can insert.
-
Click each type in turn to display a preview of the page layout.
Each page type includes at least one story area, giving you many options.
-
In the Available page types list, click Story. Then click More.
The Insert Page dialog box opens.
From this dialog box, you can insert multiple pages containing no design elements, one text box, or the same layout as the currently selected page.
-
In the Number of new pages box, enter 3, and in the Options area, click Duplicate all objects on page. Then click OK.
Publisher inserts three more identical pages.
-
Display page 7. On the Insert menu, click Page. In the Insert Newsletter Page dialog box, click Calendar in the Available page types list, and then click OK.
Publisher inserts a page containing a calendar with a schedule of events, space for one story, and one graphic with a caption. The Zoom level changes to display the whole page.
-
Repeat step 20 to insert an Order Form, a Response Form, and a Sign-up Form.
The resulting publication includes 12 pages.
-
Display the Font Schemes section of the Format Publication task pane.
The Virtual font scheme appears to be selected, but in fact the publication has reverted to the default font scheme for the Banded newsletter template, which is at the top of the list.
-
In the font scheme list, click Virtual to reapply the font scheme to the publication.
-
Display page 12 to view the customer information section and other outside page content.