What is Publisher

With the help of “Publisher”, we can print all kinds of publications and marketing materials such as brochures, invitations and business cards for distribution at a later period of time, via the Web or e-mail.

You may be thinking, ‘I can do all this with “Microsoft Word”, so why do I need “Publisher”?’

In the first place, you should have a sound knowledge of “Word” to use all these features.
With “Publisher”, it is a lot easier.
If you have a lot of printing to do, use “Publisher”.

The welcome screen

When we open “Publisher” for the first time, the following screen is displayed:

As in any Office application, we have the “Title bar” at the top, with the “Minimize” “Maximize” and “Close” buttons, to the right.

Below it, we find the “Menu bar” with all the available commands in “Publisher”. Unlike other Office 2007 applications, it does not have the “Ribbon”.

On the right side of the “Menu bar” you will find a textbox where you can enter any keyword. When you press the Enter key on your keyboard, all possible results will be displayed.

Below the “Menu bar” we have the “Search Templates” box.

If you enter a keyword here, you can search for any type of template, both locally and on the Microsoft site.

I’ve never counted them, but there are hundreds of templates that are included with the “Publisher” application.

To the left of the welcome screen, we have a number of different categories, which in turn display the different template designs, in the middle portion of the window.

In the column on the right, we have a preview of the template that is selected, and under that a number of options to modify the color, font, etc.

If you make any changes, then the example at the top of the column on the right, also changes.
It isn’t only the example that changes, each template in the middle column will be modified according to the changes made in the right column.

When you click on the “Close welcome window” button, you see the window that you’re likely to see while using an earlier version of “Publisher”.

Below the “Menu bar” we have the “Standard toolbar” where we find frequently used options such as “New”, “Open” and “Save”.Below that, we have the “Formatting Toolbar” with the different formatting options.
To the left of the application window,we have the “Object Toolbar”, including the “Select Objects”, “Text” and “Insert Table” buttons.

To their right, we have the “Format Publication” panel.

To the top and left side of the window, we have “Rulers” which can be used to align various objects in our document, with the help of “Guides”.
To add “Guides” to the document, place the cursor on the “Ruler”, and then click and drag the cursor to the bottom or right.
To move the “Guides”, move the mouse pointer over the “Guide”, and when it changes into a double-headed arrow, click and drag it to the correct position.
To remove a “Guide”, drag it back in to the “Ruler”.

At the bottom of the document we have the “Status bar”.

This displays the number of pages. Clicking on the page number takes us to that particular page.

The position of the cursor in the document is displayed.

We also have the “Object format” button.
Depending on the object selected in our document, we will find information about its properties, which can be customized by double-clicking this button.

Featured Courses

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• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
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