NOTE: You also can make publications without help from the design assistants, but we recommend you save that until you've become familiar with the program by using the available help.

A Birthday Card

Homemade birthday cards are no longer the specialty of just children with construction paper and crayons. While Publisher makes it easy enough for older children to make cards, the cards it helps create are good enough for adults to be proud of, too. If you're having trouble finding a card that expresses your feelings, you can make your own with Publisher and impress and delight the recipient with a professional-looking, yet personal, card.

Picking a style. To make a card, double left-click the Card & Invitation icon in the PageWizard, which appears when you start Publisher. (You also can left-click once on the icon, then left-click OK.) Next, choose which type of card you want to make. For a birthday card, select Special Occasion, and left-click Next. You'll see thumbnail images of several card templates for various occasions. There are three styles of birthday cards to choose from. To see a slightly larger picture and a brief description of a specific template, left-click it. When you've found the style you want, left-click Next. (We chose the third one, which is described as "Eye-catching, contemporary birthday wishes.")

Adding text. The next dialog box asks whether you'd like to see suggested messages or type your own text. For the card we selected, there are 37 text options to choose from if you don't feel like writing your own. Some are humorous; others are more sentimental. If you left-click the beginning of a text selection, you'll be shown the whole thing, with one window for the front text and another for the inside text. Once you've selected the text you want, left-click Next. If you don't like any of the options, use the back arrow button to go back and write your own text.

Microsoft Publisher offers several different templates to help you create your publications.

If you choose to type your own message, you'll be asked to write the front cover text and then the inside text. The text saying "Your front cover text here" and "Your inside text here" will be deleted as soon as you type your message.

Next you'll choose what to put on the back cover of the card. The default option is a message that says "Made for you by (your name here)." If you want that option, just delete the (your name here), and type your name. If you want to write a different message on the back of the card, just start typing, and the default message will be replaced by your text. If you prefer to leave the back of the card blank, left-click the box next to "No text on the back, thanks." When you've completed one of those steps, left-click Next, then left-click Create It!. The PageWizard takes only a few minutes to put together all of the elements you selected.

The card is now ready to be printed, but you also have the option of making changes to it. If you're ready to print, left-click the circle in front of No in response to Publisher's prompt asking whether you want help adding text and pictures. Then left-click OK, and you'll be shown the finished card. Use the arrow buttons at the bottom of the viewing window to flip the pages of the card. When you've checked it and are ready to print, choose Print from the File menu.

Making changes to the card. If you want to change the card, you can request step-by-step help with the process of adding your own text and pictures by choosing Yes when Publisher asks if you want help, then left-clicking OK. (To move through the step-by-step help, left-click the gr ay arrow in front of each menu option you want.) You'll be given a list of elements you can get help with, such as Setting Up My Pages, Special Effects, and Adding Designer Objects To My Publication. Left-click one of these choices, and you'll get a list of options.

For example, we chose to get help with special effects and got a list including Text Effects, Borders, Colors And Shading, and Layering. We then chose Borders and asked for help adding a fancy border. We followed Publish-er's directions, left-clicking the object we wanted a border around (the art on the front), then choosing Border Art from the Format menu. We chose the Confetti...Streamers border, and left-clicked OK. (In the Border Art dialog box, you also can change the size of the border before applying it to your card if you want.)

If you want to make more than one change to the card, use the back arrow in the help box at the right of your screen to go back and choose the type of changes you want. When you're done, you can print the card as described above.

Publisher 's step-by-step help will walk you through the process of customizing any publication.

To save a card (or any publication), use the Save As option in the File menu. In the Save As dialog box, choose a folder to store the file in, name the file, and left-click Save.

You can follow the same steps to make several kinds of cards, such as Christmas cards, thank-you cards, anniversary cards, or invitations to a company open house or child's birthday party.

A Flyer

Whether you need a flyer to advertise a garage sale or lost pet, or a mailer to advertise the grand opening of your company, Publisher can help you make it. After you choose the Flyer option, you must decide whether your flyer is for personal, business, school, or other purposes.

The basics. For our example, we chose to make a business flyer. The Business option offers five choices: Grand Opening, Promo-tion, Sale, Contest, and Trip. Again, to see a larger view and a short description of a template, left-click it. The description will tell you whether that template includes extras such as a mailer or coupons. The Promotion template includes phone number tear-offs for customers to take; all others include a mailer. The Trip option includes a mail-in coupon. As with the card we created, you select the type of publication you want to create by left-clicking it, then left-click Next.

The flyers each have a completed layout, so you won't be asked to add text before the flyer is assembled. After choosing which flyer you want (we chose the Promotion flyer) and going to the next screen, you'll left-click Create It! (the only choice other than to cancel what you've done or go back and change it), and Publisher now will help you add your text to the assembled flyer. The first step is to enter the name of your business. As with the other dialog boxes for entering text, when you type in your own text, the generic label from Publisher (in this case, Business Name) will disappear as you begin to type. After you've entered your business's name, left-click Next, and you'll be asked to enter the phone number. The next piece of information you're asked for is the title of your flyer.

After entering that basic information, you'll be asked whether you want step-by-step help finishing the flyer. If you choose No, Publisher will show you the flyer with only the basic information you provided. The odds are that you will need to add or change several elements of your flyer, so we suggest that you choose Yes when Publisher asks if you want help. (If you choose No and then decide you would like help, left-click the Show Help button at the lower right corner of your screen.)

Customizing the flyer. The first change we made was to add additional text to the flyer. Besides the title, business name, and phone number, we wanted to list what was involved in the promotion.

To add text:

1. Choose Text, Tables, And WordArt from Publisher's help list at the right side of the screen.

2. Choose Text from the list.

3. Left-click Adding Or Replacing Text. Pub-lisher will ask what you want to add or replace; we chose Text In A Text Frame, stating that we wanted to type in the text instead of importing it. Publisher's directions led us through the steps of left-clicking the Text Frame tool on the left toolbar, drawing a text frame using the mouse, and typing in the text.

If the text is too small or too large to fill the area you want, you can make the text fit the text frame with these steps:

1. Use the back arrow to return to the list of help options for text, and choose help with Changing The Size Or Look Of Text Or Its Frame.

2. Choose Change The Size Or Look Of The Characters.

3. Left-click Change Text Size. Publisher shows how to highlight the text with the mouse, then choose a type size in the Size box on the top toolbar. Experiment until you find the size that makes the text fill the text frame.

Next, we changed the clip art on our flyer. The existing art wasn't what we wanted, so we replaced it with a piece of clip art from Publisher's gallery. We looked through the collection of clip-art images at the back of the user's manual, rather than randomly selecting names from the list of available images, until we found one we liked. You also can import into Publisher clip art from other sources, if you don't find the image you want in the Pub-lisher Pictures Gallery. You also have the option of scanning in graphics.

To change the picture on a flyer:

1. Choose Pictures, Lines, And Shapes from the list of help options.

2. Choose Pictures from the list.

3. Select Add A Picture.

4. Left-click Replace One Piece Of Clip Art In My Publication With Another. (There are options to let you import art from other sources as well.) Publisher will tell you to double left-click the picture frame that contains the piece of clip art you want to replace. You'll then see a ClipArt Gallery dialog box, from which you can choose a category to narrow your search and find the specific piece of clip art you want to use.

5. Once you've chosen the art, left-click Insert to put it in the flyer. An Import Options dialog box will appear; you must decide whether you want to change the frame to fit the picture or change the picture to fit the frame. Changing the picture may distort the image, so we chose to change the frame instead.

The last step was to move the art so that it was in the center of the area. To do that, left-click the picture, hold down the mouse button, and drag the frame to the location you want the picture in.

Finally, we changed the colors of both the background shape and some of the text on our flyer. To change the color of a shape:

1. Left-click Pictures, Lines, And Shapes, then choose Shapes from the list.

2. Choose Change The Look Of A Shape.

3. Left-click Fill The Shape With A Color Or Pattern. Publisher will tell you to left-click the frame or shape to select it, then left-click the Object Color button on the top toolbar.

4. To choose a color from the box that appears, left-click the color, and it will be applied to the shape you'd selected.

To change the color of text:

1. Choose Text, Tables, And WordArt.

2. Select Text.

3. Left-click Changing The Size Or Look Of Text Or Its Frame.

4. Select Change The Size Or Look Of Characters, then Change Text Color. Publisher will have you highlight the text and left-click the Font Color button on the top toolbar. You again will choose a color, which Publisher applies to the highlighted text.

If you want to make a different kind of flyer, there are many templates available in the nonbusiness categories. The Personal category offers four templates: Party, For Sale, Lost Or Found, and Garage Sale. The For Sale and Lost Or Found templates include phone number tear-offs for people to respond to the flyer. The School option offers four types of flyers, which are Fund Raiser, School Clubs, Sports, and Field Trip. The Fund Raiser flyer includes a mailer; both the School Clubs and Field Trip flyers include permission forms. The Other category offers four styles for any occasion that isn't covered by the more specific templates: Basic, Bold, Formal, and Jazzy.

You can add clip art from many sources. Publisher's own clip art gallery is fairly extensive.

A Newsletter

Publisher can help you with newsletters for any event, such as employee newsletters, church newsletters, or newsletters for any organization you belong to, such as your child's PTA, your softball team, or your volunteer group.

NOTE: If you'll be needing a large number of copies of a newsletter, you may want to have the actual printing done by a professional. If you choose to do so, you'll need to find out what printer settings to use when creating the newsletter because printer settings affect your layout. You'll need to ask the printer which printer driver to use and which colors and color-printing methods are available. Set the printer settings before beginning your newsletter.

Layout options. There are 12 style choices for newsletters, including Classic, Modern, Water Color, Holiday, and School News. We chose to use the Classic template to create a newsletter for the employees of a large company. Select the style you want, and left-click Next.

The next choice you'll make is the number of columns you want on each page: one, two, three, or four. (There will be the same number of columns on each page of your publication.) The default is three, and Publisher explains that this is the most popular layout for a newsletter. We chose to stick with this format.

You then choose how many stories you want on the first page; you can have up to three. The stories can be continued onto later pages in the newsletter, so don't worry about how many will fit. Just choose the most important items, and put those on the cover. We chose to put two stories on our front page.

Next, choose a title for your newsletter. Enter it in the dialog box, and left-click Next. Then, you must decide whether to include a table of contents, publication date, and volume and issue numbers. (You can include any combination of these three elements.) The default date is the date your computer registers as the current date.

Selecting the number of pages to have in your newsletter is the next step. We chose to make our newsletter just four pages long. You'll then decide whether you want room for a mailing label on the back and whether the printing will be on both sides of the paper. We opted to use a mailing label and to print on both sides of the paper.

Customizing your newsletter. After you've made all of your choices and left-clicked the Create It! button, you'll be offered step-by-step help with constructing the newsletter: adding text, graphics, setting up pages, adding special effects, and so on. Again, we suggest that you opt to accept this help because the process of putting together all of the elements of a newsletter can be quite complicated if you're not familiar with it.

As with any Publisher document, you choose what you want help with from a list along the right side of your screen. Once you've moved through the series of choices to get help with one feature, you can return to get help with something else, using the back arrow button at the bottom of the Help window.

You can add text in several ways. The two most common are to type it directly into the text frame, replacing the placeholder text that Publisher had there, or import text from another application. Other options include using OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) to link a file in another application to your newsletter and typing text in Microsoft Word to be placed in your Publisher newsletter.

To type text directly into a text frame:

1. Choose Text, Tables, And WordArt.

2. Select Text.

3. Left-click Adding Or Replacing Text.

4. When asked what you want to add or replace, choose Text In A Text Frame.

5. Now select the Type It In option. Publisher will show you how to create a text frame by left-clicking the Text Frame tool and using the mouse to draw a box. Now all you do is type the text. Text frames have assigned formatting, so if you type text directly into a frame, it will take on that formatting. You always can change the formatting later.

If you're used to working with a word processing application such as Word or if you're getting material on diskette from other sources to add to your newsletter, you'll probably want to import text from another application instead of typing it in the text frame. To import text from another application into a text frame:

1. Follow the same steps as above, but choose Import All The Text In A File Created In Another Program instead of Type It In.

2. Publisher will have you left-click the frame you want to add the text to and then go to the Insert menu and choose Text File.

3. Choose the file you want to import from the directory listing.

4. Left-click OK.

Imported text usually keeps whatever formatting it had in the original application, but again, it can be changed once in the text frame.

Publisher has a feature called Autoflow, which lets it accommodate text that doesn't fit into a text frame by either connecting multiple text frames or adding a new text frame. If you import text that doesn't fit into the frame you've chosen, Publisher will ask whether you want to flow the text throughout the news-letter. If you want to make the text fit the frame, you can choose not to use this feature and to edit the text to fit the allotted space.

If you choose to have an item flow from one page to another, Publisher automatically can insert a notice at the end of the first section that tells readers where the story is continued. You also can choose to have a notice at the beginning of the next text frame telling where the story is continued from. These notices will have the correct page numbers inserted automatically by Publisher. To create these notices:

1. Use the right mouse button to click one of the frames that needs a notice.

2. Left-click Text Frame Properties.

3. Under Options, left-click one or both of the boxes in front of the Continued On/From notices.

4. Repeat the process for every text frame that needs a continued notice.

Illustrations add interest to a newsletter, breaking up the text. You can add clip art, pictures from programs such as Win95's Paint accessory, or photographs to your news- letter to catch the readers' attention. To add a graphic:

1. Choose Pictures, Lines, And Shapes from the list of things Publisher offers help with.

2. Select Pictures.

3. Left-click Add A Picture. There are several ways you can add a picture; we chose to add a piece of clip art from Publisher's ClipArt Gallery. To do that, you either can left-click an existing picture frame or create a picture frame in the same way we created a text frame earlier, this time using the Picture Frame tool instead of the Text Frame tool.

4. Choose ClipArt from the Insert menu.

5.Left-click the category of clip art you want to see, and double left-click the picture you want to use. It will be inserted into the frame.

After you add a graphic to your newsletter, you can make the text wrap either around the picture frame containing the graphic or around the graphic itself. To control how the text wraps:

1. Choose help with Pictures, and Arrange Text And Pictures.

2. Select Wrap Text Around A Picture, then decide whether you want it wrapped around the frame or the outline of the picture itself.

3. To wrap the text around the actual picture, Publisher will tell you to left-click the picture frame to select it, then left-click the Wrap Text To Picture button on the top toolbar.

Once you've added the text and graphics into your newsletter, you'll need to add the details. One of the most important details is your table of contents. To create a table of contents:

1. Left-click the Table tool on the left toolbar, and use the mouse to draw a table frame.

2. The Create Table dialog box will open, and you can choose one of three styles for your table of contents from a list of several kinds of tables. A sample of the type of table you select will appear in the dialog box.

3. When you find the one you want, left-click OK, and it will be placed in the table frame you created.

4. Now you need to add the text to the table of contents. A blinking cursor will appear for you to start typing in the text. First, type the title (Table of Contents or In This Issue will work well). Use the TAB key to go from one line to the next and to move to the spot for the page number at the end of each line. Type in the titles of your articles and their page numbers. You'll probably want to use the zoom control buttons at the bottom of the window to zoom in so you can see what you're typing.

Other details can be added to your newsletter using the Design Gallery. You can add details such as pull quotes, sidebars, and headlines using the Design Gallery's styles. When you find one you like, left-click Insert Object.

The Insert menu also offers several ways to fine-tune your newsletter. For example, you can left-click a text frame, open the Insert menu, and choose Fancy First Letter to make the first letter of the story larger; this is called a drop cap. There are several styles of drop caps to choose from. Left-click OK after choosing your favorite.

When you've made all the changes you want, you can preview your newsletter prior to printing it by using the arrow keys to move among pages. When you're ready to print, just select Print from the File menu. If you're taking the file to an outside printer, use the Save As command in the File menu to save the file to a diskette.

There are many other projects you can do with Publisher's help. The three we've outlined should get you started, but you should explore on your own and find dozens of new ways to communicate. In addition to cards, flyers, and newsletters, you can make letterhead, business forms, business cards, calendars, labels for several items including computer diskettes and videotapes, and many other types of publications. No matter what the message you need to send, Publisher can help you find a way to do it.

by Diana K. McLean