Welcome to Microsoft Publisher 2007 For Dummies. If you’ve never used desktop publishing software and really aren’t much interested in becoming an expert at it, congratulations! The book you hold in your hands is an excellent choice: It can help you complete your current project quickly — and with the least effort possible. (I’m pretty good at that “least effort possible” stuff. Just ask our editors.)
Many computer users simply don’t have the time or resources to become experts on all the complicated software programs they use. Oh, sure, some of you like to spend your spare time learning the most minute details about the software you use — We won’t mention any names, Kevin — but most of us are content to learn just enough to get the job done in an efficient manner. We don’t want to read page after page of esoteric information, presented by some computer books, that doesn’t pertain to the job at hand. If you want to know a simple answer to a single question about desktop publishing with Microsoft Publisher 2007, this book is for you.
Microsoft Publisher 2007, designed for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server (Service Pack 1 required), and newer operating systems, is an inexpensive desktop publishing program. In fact, if you purchased any of the following versions of Microsoft Office 2007, you already own it: Microsoft Office Small Business 2007, Microsoft Office Professional 2007, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, or Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007. You use this program to create professional-looking marketing materials — brochures and flyers, for example — as well as Web pages.
Even though Microsoft Publisher 2007 is low priced ($169 for a full-package version or $99 to upgrade from a previous version), it’s definitely not underpowered. You can do things with Microsoft Publisher 2007 that a few years ago would have made the big boys (you know, those expensive desktop publishing programs) sit up and take notice. For example, you can create publications automatically by using the wizards in Microsoft Publisher (something that you can’t do with your Quirks and PageMonsters). You can freely borrow any of the professionally designed templates from Microsoft Office online — and customize it to your heart’s content. You can even personalize the contents of your publications so that each of the 10,000 recipients thinks you created a document expressly for him or her.
We want to carry on with the For Dummies tradition and help you have fun with Microsoft Publisher 2007 as you use this book. After all, if a 5-year-old can find happiness with a set of crayons, you should be able to find bliss with all the bells and whistles that you’ll uncover in Publisher 2007! We do have to warn you that creating a wealth of publications might prove hazardous to the front of your refrigerator, because you’ll want to share your artistic achievements with your significant others.
You can read this book from cover to cover, but you don’t necessarily have to; you can use it as a reference book. When you need to know something about a particular aspect of Microsoft Publisher 2007, just jump to the appropriate section and read about it. And don’t worry that you’ll feel lost if you start on page 231 rather than on page 1; most chapters are self contained, so you can dip your toes in at any point.
If you’re curious about what you might find, here are some typical sections you might stumble across:
You Want Fast? Well, Meet Mr. Wizard
Things You Can Do with Files
Keeping Good Margins
Hide and Seek: Find and Replace
Collecting and Using Type
How Color Improves Your Page
Printers and Output Quality
Because this book is a reference, you can look up a topic of interest in the table of contents or in the index, in the back of this book. These tools refer you to the sections that talk about that topic. If you need to know something specific in order to understand a section’s content, we tell you so. We know that computer technology is loaded with confusing words and phrases and technobabble. (Sometimes we can’t avoid slinging this stuff about like a short-order cook in a cheap diner.) But in some cases, we may send you off elsewhere to help you figure out the confusing terms.
We like to give you examples of how to do something. Because Microsoft Publisher 2007 is a Windows-based program, most instructions tell you to “click here” or “click there” or to “choose File⇒Print from the menu” or “press Alt+F,P on the keyboard.” Notice two things about these instructions: First, the File⇒Print business is our shorthand way of saying “Open the File menu and then choose Print from the choices that appear”; second, we show you that you press and hold the Alt key while you press the F key, by placing the plus sign (+) sign between them. Then you release both keys and press the P key. This keyboard combination produces the same action as using your mouse to choose the menu command. It’s all standard Windows fare.
If we want you to enter information from your keyboard, you may see a line that looks like the following (this comes up just a few times):
ENTER THIS STUFF
In this example, you type the words ENTER THIS STUFF after the prompt and then press the Enter key. Notice that we don’t use quotation marks around the text (“ENTER THIS STUFF”) because we don’t want you to enter quotation marks. We then explain why you do what we’ve told you to do and point out what happens after you do, so don’t worry.
Desktop publishing can be a complicated endeavor, with many things that you may (or may not) want to know about. We include in this book a few sections on more advanced topics, such as selecting paper, working with outside print services, and choosing color processes. Of course, if all you want to do is create a greeting card or gift certificate and print the results from your inkjet printer, you might not need to look at these topics. We try to warn you when a section tends toward technical talk or is limited to specific interests. But you can read these sections, and doing so will earn you a gold star in the Desktop Publishing Hall of Fame (although that’s not what this book is meant to do).
We make only three assumptions about you in this book. The first, we’ve already stated: You don’t want to waste time studying useless trivia. You’re in a hurry, and you want to get your work done.
Our second assumption is that you have a PC that has at least Microsoft Windows XP installed — although Vista would be nice. Maybe you have set up your computer, or maybe someone else has. But it’s working, and you can get the help you need to keep it working.
Our third assumption is that you know your way around your computer’s operating system well enough to perform simple operations in that environment. You already know how to move your mouse and stroke your keyboard. You should know how to select a menu command, know how to work with dialog boxes and windows, and be familiar with common desktop items, such as the Recycle Bin. We cover some of these topics (when the discussion is directly applicable to Microsoft Publisher 2007), but we don’t go into any great detail.
By the way, if finding your way around your new computer or your operating system is still one of the mysteries of life for you, check out the following books, published by Wiley Publishing:
PCs All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, by Mark L. Chambers
Windows XP For Dummies, by Andy Rathbone
Windows Vista For Dummies, by Andy Rathbone
Topics in this book are generally arranged as though we were directing you through a desktop publishing project from start to finish. In the progression of topics, we try to address the issues you commonly tackle first, first, and the issues that you tackle last, last. Clever, eh? This book has seven major parts; each part has two or more chapters. (Our editors insist that each divided topic should have at least two subdivisions, and we slavishly follow their teachings.)
Aside from these considerations, you’ll find that most chapters stand by themselves. You can start reading at any section. Great teachers tell us, “Tell them (the audience) what you are going to tell them.” So, we outlined the entire book as follows.
When you create a project in Microsoft Publisher 2007 to print something, you’re doing desktop publishing (DTP). When you create a project to place on the Internet, you’re Web spinning. Desktop publishing replaces technology of past decades and centuries with something new and special. For many folks, desktop publishing is the reason they bought computers. Part I tells you what desktop publishing is, how it came about, and where it’s going. Also in Part I, we give you the skinny on design issues and provide the nickel tour on the basics that you need to know to run and use the program.
Microsoft Publisher 2007, like most desktop publishing programs, uses the metaphor of a pasteboard. In this part, you work on creating a page, defining the layout, and then adding things to your page. You add objects to Microsoft Publisher 2007 pages inside frames, which we tell you how to work with in this part. (“We’re innocent, we tell ya. We’ve been framed!”)
An important part of desktop publishing is marrying text and figures on a page. In this part, you discover how to work with text on your page; not just how to enter text into a text frame, mind you, but also how to select and work with type. This part also guides you through the process of importing text from Microsoft Word 2007 and including tables from Microsoft Excel 2007 and Microsoft Access 2007 in your Microsoft Publisher 2007 publications. We’ll leave you to figure out who the maniac is.
A picture is worth a thousand words. That works out to be about $6.95. Honest, we did the math ourselves! You always knew talk was cheap. Now you know how cheap. Microsoft Publisher 2007 lets you enhance your page with all kinds of pictures: drawings, images, and other forms of art, including Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 slides and a chapter on using Microsoft Picture Manager. In this part, we tell you what you need to know to create and work with different kinds of pictures — and where to get help if you need it. We also use a chapter to talk about the related topic of using color in your publications.
This part contains a cornucopia of important fruits of knowledge for you to nibble on. You see how to fine-tune your page: Edit copy, hyphenate, add flourishes, and assemble your project. You also find a chapter in this part with a discussion on paper, printing, and working with commercial print services.
Publishing on the Internet is almost a requirement. In this part, you learn how to create and edit a Web site, including adding graphics and hyperlinks and adding color and texture to the background. You also find tips on previewing your Web site. Finally, we tell you how to publish your Web site.
Other people have their lists, and we have our lists. In this part, The Part of Tens, you see lists of ten things on topics that you will want to know about. We give you lists on design issues, printing, commercial print services, and other topics. Have fun reading this part, and when you’re done, we will part.
You won’t find a lot of icons in this book, but you will find some. Here is what they mean:
You’re ready to use this book. Start by reviewing the table of contents to find a topic of current interest to you. Then dive right in and read about it. Try some of our suggestions in your work and experiment. Microsoft Publisher 2007 is a very friendly and forgiving program. (If you save copies of your publication as you go, little can go wrong that you can’t fix.)
When you find something that doesn’t work quite the way you expect or something that you want to know more about, return to this book. Repeat the process. Finding out about Microsoft Publisher 2007 and Windows XP or Windows Vista can and should be an exploration. Microsoft meant for these programs to be a “discoverable environment” — that is, to be like a well-designed computer game that you can figure out as you play. We’re here to get you past any bumps or tilts that you might encounter.
Desktop publishing is fun. That’s why so many people do it. And Microsoft Publisher 2007 makes it easier to do than any other program we know of.