Office 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 30. Publisher

When you need to lay out a document for publication, Publisher is the program for you. It helps create everything from simple greeting cards and postcards to complex multi-page newsletters and catalogs. You can write directly in Publisher—using it as a kind of souped-up word processor—or polish your prose in Word and then copy and paste your text into Publisher.

This chapter introduces this low-profile yet high-powered program and shows how to lay out a publication, from creation straight through to adding text and storing your business information so you don’t have to enter it over and over again. It also includes design advice such as unifying the look of your document with color and font schemes, using Publisher’s layout guides, and adding and formatting images. Finally, when you’re ready to send your baby off to the Land of Print, you can run Document Checker to look for (and fix) design problems, and then use a desktop printer or package it up for a commercial printer.

Creating a New Publication

Publisher 2013’s opening screen lets you get started right away by offering a selection of templates. As in other Office programs, template previews appear on the right. Scroll through the list of suggested templates, or use the Search box to find what you’re looking for. Creating a new document from this page works the same way it does in Word, so see Creating a New Document if you need a refresher on how to do that.

Tip

If you’ve already got a Publisher file open, ...