Intro to Microsoft Publisher

Find out level of skill, and address any immediate concerns. "At any given point in Publisher hit F1 for comprehensive help on a given point. If you wish, try it now" mspub will automatically dump thm into the startup area. Might as well go with that! Options are use wizard (explain), use template (explain) start from scratch (obvious), open existing pub doc(also obvious) and instructions. For starters, just to throw them in, lets we walk through the business card & paper demonstration!

Steps:

  1. shows information. Hit next
  2. more info next
  3. if it asks you if you work for some ocmpany, just say no!
  4. pick how many lines (keep in mind that the first line is the business name)
  5. type in your return address (company name first)
  6. Pick a style (we aren’t picky here)
  7. Pick from a logo or initials
  8. Pick what you want on the business card
  9. Pick what you want on the letterhead
  10. Type your name, and then your job title (if applicable)
  11. After filling in whatever information required, go and tell it to print as many as it can fit on to the page.

After looking at them, lets go and save them. We will need to go and put them in the \tlrpub directory as something called CARD.PUB

after saving this file, close it (teaching them how to close the file if need be.

"Publisher UNLIKE most of the other programs in the Microsoft suites CANNOT have more than one document open at a given time, you must close the document that you are working on at the time.

Don’t close publisher, not really neccesarry at this time.

At this point, on the startup screen we will notice that there now should be an open existing publication button.

The options that will be displayed here are the last few publisher documents that you have saved (not unlike the history on many other microsoft programs)

Go ahead and and select more files (which is used to select files that are not on the recently used list.)

open pblsh_02.pub in the \tlrpub directory..you can pick preview file to get a thumbnail of the document before you open it.

You will get a dialog box saying that the printer has changed since you last used it, just say OK.

Lets take a few moments now and get familiar with the various areas that make up the main publisher environment.

To the top and left, you will notice a ruler. This is very useful for measuring specific objects, and for proportioning things to a certain length. Among other things, a promenent use that comes to mind is a business card, or making handouts. You will notice two things about the ruler that enhance it’s usefulness. One is the fact that you can pick the ruler up and move it (not unlike the guides in pagemaker), and it will keep the same emasurements it had before.

When you select an area on the document, the ruler will change slightly to sho you the boundaries (and margins if applicable) of the area selected.

Down on the bottom you will also see two other useful objects, the page mover which shows you the page you currently are on, and allows for easy movement between pages on you publication. You will also see next to that the zoom area. This allows you to change the size at which you view the publisher document. With this you can choose to have all of the document on the screen, view only parts of it at a time, view it at real size, or even larger for precise movement.

At the very bottome is the status bar, which will display any messages relating to the cursor/commands you are doing at this point in time. It also relays some information about the document and the cursors position.

Up at the top (like all windows applications) is the menu bar. This is accessed via mouse, or hitting the f10 or alt keys. The menus in short

File: Opening,saving,closing,printing, importing

edit: Undo,copy,paste,cut,select,find,insert

page: switchpages, view 2-up, make new page background, page setup

layout, guides, frames, layering,grouping aligning, nudging.

Format: formatting, styles, fonts, line spacing, letter spacing, tabs

Table: auto formatting, merging cells, inserting/deleting rows,columns

Tools: spell check, check layout, snapping to grid, hiding showing picts, rulkers, etc.

Help: duh

along the left is the main toolbar, which has the most common items for a publisher docum,ent.

Pointer is the main controller, with it, you can select, resize etc.

Text is to make a text frame,

Table is a multi-chart table.

Wordart is to make you art do neat things

Picture imports a picture.

Wizard runs an inline wizard (cupons and the like)

Drawing makes drawing items for use (this can be real keen..espesially the explosive icons!

The top toolbar varies with the items selected. The various items coorespond to what is being done.

Font, Style,size, effects, alignment and frame are all relatively self explaitory.

For a picture or other object are two useful things. One is te crop tool, for pictures that need to be cropped. The other is the word wrap tool allows you to define whether the words from a text area wrap around the pictures frame, or just around the picture itself. Some really interesting effects can be achieved by wrapping the words around the picture. Like putting a symbol in the middle of a document, and having the text work around it.

Scroll Bars

 

Now, we are going to experiment with making a new document, possibly with the intent of making a potential template.

Shall we make..oh say a template for letterhead.

Lets take a small image from the clipart gallery (be warned that alex only has partial clipart.)

take the clipart. Talk about the various ways of resizing pictures., and perhaps talk about fitting text around them.

Then have them make a text block, perhaps having their name in bold print (or the name of the company) and maybe have all the information bold printed.

Also illustrate the use of lines (don’t we all like having that neat line under our letterhead?)

By clicking and dragging the edges of frames you can move the frames around.

If some one overlaps, or perhaps suggest it, so that you can explain the use of the bring to forground and send to back functions.

Also perhaps suggest that people try out the use of the frame wrapping of graphics..perhaps have some text near the symbol.

Explaing grouping...they select one object, then hold shift and select another, and the group icon appears at the bottom. (it will then group the two items (you hit the ungroup button to take them apart.)

Explain the use of the import text feature, and how they can use it with templates (ie have someone insert the letter they just wrote onto their nice newly developed letterhead template!)

(we should be near lunch time by now)

How to line up objexts: select all objects, then LAYOUT: LINE UP OBJS

Also explain the use of nudge obj’s

Tools Check Layout Will tell You if your Document has soME foMAtting errors in nit

 

Talk about multiple pages and the options (before/after) and blank, or text frame or duplicate a page (the last is really nice for business cards!)

Talk about connecting text frames

Talk about backgrounds PAGE:GO TO BACKGROUND...background serves same purpose as master slide in Powerpnt

Tables:

use table to merge horizontal cells, or use format to modify the table.

Explain the use of WordArt and it’s ability to make catchy items. Especially the path items at the upper left.

Finally explain the inborn wizards, and how to do neat things.

Among other things, explain how t make a dropshadowed box w/o using the drop shadow feature.