The Beginner’s Guide to Microsoft Publisher

Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Beginner’s Guide to Microsoft Publisher”.
This is the beginner’s guide to Microsoft. Publisher and publisher is one of the lesser-known tools that are included in Microsoft Office, but I think publisher is great. It’S very useful and I’ve really enjoyed using it and what is the purpose of publisher, Microsoft? Publisher is meant to be an entry level desktop publishing tool; in other words, we’re meant to be able to use it to create things like birthday cards, anniversary cards, Flyers, handouts, sign-up sheets for volunteering posters, and things like that. So let’s get started looking at how we can use publisher to create these kinds of documents.

Now, unfortunately, publisher does not come with all versions of Microsoft Office, so you may or may not have access to it. You’Ll notice that down here on my taskbar, I have an icon for Microsoft, Publisher and I can just click that to open it up. If you don’t see that you may still have publisher, what you would need to do is just go here to the lower left corner of the screen, click and do a search for publisher, and then you can just hit, Enter or return to open it up. Now that publisher is open notice, the option that we have here it gives us a series of templates that we can choose from if we want to just customize somebody else’s work. So, for example, they have a collection here of advertisements and I can just click on those to open up one of the advertisement templates. I can look at some of the banner options that are available and you can see that there’s quite a few. There are calendars, there are brochures, there are menus, just quite a variety of templates and let’s say you want to actually use one of these templates just go ahead and click on it.

You may need to install that particular template into your copy of publisher, but it’s easy to do you basically just select it and it will install it, but this one appears to already be installed and I can just click create and there’s my template that I can Now, customize, just by clicking and making changes, so that really is a powerful option that you have. As you use publisher, you can just open up a template where somebody else has done most of the work designing the document, and you can just now customize it for your own use. I’Ve saved countless hours using templates, but I also want you to see how to create a document from scratch using Microsoft Publisher, so I’m gon na click here on blank eight-and-a-half by eleven. Alternatively, you could do blank eleven by eight and a half but I’ll. Stick to this one here, so I just double click on it and it opens up a blank publisher document for me to work with, and the first thing that I want to talk about.

While I zoom in on this document a little bit using this slider. The first thing I wanted to talk about is: what is it exactly that differentiates publisher from another Microsoft Office tool? Called Microsoft Word, I think most people use Microsoft Word a lot more than they use Microsoft, Publisher and at first glance they seem to be quite similar, and there really are some similarities between these two tools and to illustrate this a little bit better. I’M gon na go ahead and open up Microsoft, Word a blank document and I’m going to snap it to the side of the screen. If you want to learn how to do that, I have a video tutorial on Windows, tips and tricks that will show you how to do that. So you can see on the right.

I have Microsoft Word and on the Left. I have Microsoft Publisher and they seem to be fairly similar. We have some rulers and things across the top and at the left, and they both seem to be blank pages that I can then add text to and other things, and that’s certainly the case. But the main difference between the two is that, while Microsoft Word is designed basically for composition, it’s for composing text.

Let’S say I want to write an essay or a paper or a report or a memo all of those things I would do in Microsoft Word and, as I typed this out, it’s expecting me to just continue to compose this document. It’S gon na put things into paragraphs, and word is very good at that, and so, like I say it’s great for reports essays memos those kinds of things compositions. Microsoft, Publisher, on the other hand, is more about planning out a page, layout and design. So I have a page here: how do I want to design this page? How do I want to lay out the information and the graphics on this page to make the biggest impact on my audience now, because of that in Microsoft, Publisher, you get to put the pictures and the text exactly where you want them to be on the page And is it possible to do that in Microsoft? Word? Yes, it is, but it’s a little bit harder right.

If I wanted to put this paragraph right here, I can’t just click and drag and put it there at least not very easily. I would have to instead click to put my mouse cursor, where I want it to be and then tap enter or return on the keyboard to get it to where I want it to be. So it’s just a little different. This is meant to be paragraphs and compositions, whereas Microsoft Publisher, I can click and drag and drop text exactly where I want it to be and same with pictures.

So let’s look at how to do that. Let’S say I would like to make a flyer to sell my Amazon echo and my Google home Mini. These are two gadgets that I have in my house and I love them.

I think they’re amazing, especially for the price, but let’s say I want to get rid of them, so I want to make a flyer saying that they’re for sale. So, first of all I would like to have some words here across the top of the page. That say for sale and there’s a couple of different ways. I could do that, but I’m just gon na make sure I’m on the insert tab and ribbon and I’ll go to draw text box. So now I just click and drag on the screen to draw out a box, a text box. I let go and then I’ll just type for sale, I’ll highlight that text and then I can change its size very similar to what you would do in Microsoft. Word or PowerPoint I might decide to underline that and also to Center the text. So that looks pretty good. So far, now remember what I said in Microsoft: Publisher, one of the strengths that it has because it’s about designing and laying out a page.

You can click and drag any element anywhere. You want it to be now. I really would like this to be centered. I would like it to be totally centered on the page and I’m having a little bit of trouble doing that, so what I can do to Center it better is. I simply make sure that this text box is selected which it is and then I go here to the Home tab home, ribbon notice that there’s an align button and I can click on that. I choose relative to margin guides and then once I do that once I select that I can go back to a line and look it. Let’S me a line Center, so I’ll click that and it put it exactly in the center of the page. Now, there’s a nice additional feature that will help you to organize and arrange your page elements in publisher, better, and that is here at the left notice that we have a ruler here at the left.

Also above we have a ruler, and you can eyeball that and that can help you but notice what you can do. You can click on the ruler and drag and it’s kind of hard to see. You have to look kind of carefully, but do you see that faint green vertical line? That is a vertical guide, and I can drop that exactly at the midpoint of this page. So this is an eight and a half width page.

So I could go to four and a quarter, and that should be exactly the center of the page notice that I can do the same thing up here at the top. I can create a horizontal guide, so eight and a half by eleven, so exactly half would be at five and a half. So, by doing that, notice that I’ve created quadrants and these guide lines, the horizontal and the vertical guide lines are only there to help me as I design and layout the page. These are not going to be printed the audience that eventually gets this flyer, or this document is not really gon na see those when the documents print it out or published in some other way.

But I hope that you can see how useful those guidelines can be. Also, I want you to know that you can have more than one vertical guideline. You can have more than one horizontal guideline.

You could really divide up the page in useful ways for yourself, I just undid those, but I wanted you to see that you can have more than one of each so now that I have for sale at the top. I want to insert a picture of what I’m selling, so I just go to insert there’s lots of options for things that you can insert, but in this tutorial I’m gon na focus exclusively on text boxes and on pictures in a future tutorial. I’D like to show you more advanced options and features of Microsoft, Publisher, but for right now, let’s focus just in on pictures.

So I click on pictures and it’s accessing my computer trying to find pictures and it took me automatically to a pictures folder. That’S on my computer, but I want to switch in this case to deaf top, and I have a folder called images for publisher. Here is a picture of the echo dot and I just double clicked on it: to open it up and pull it into Microsoft.

Publisher. This picture is resizable just by clicking and dragging a corner of the picture. It could be any corner, but that’s about the right size, I think and notice. By default automatically this picture is draggable. It will move exactly where I want it to move. Now.

That’S not true in Microsoft Word if I were to import that same picture into Microsoft. Word notice that, yes, it is resizable, but it doesn’t drag it, doesn’t click and drag by default to the exact place where I want it, it kind of. Does it moves a little bit and there are ways around this problem, as many of you know, but I love that in publisher, because it’s all about designing and laying out the page. I can put this picture wherever I want it to be notice, though, that it does affect my title and any other text if I bump into it, they do scoot aside by default, so that is something to watch for, so I would like it to be there Again, centered on the page, so I can just align it and say align Center. It looks like I already had it centered, okay.

Next, I would like to add some text to go with this and basically this text. I just want it to say what it costs and a few things like that. So I just go to insert back to draw text box and then I can click and drag where I want the text to appear, maybe I’ll say: excellent condition: Amazon echo dot $ 39.99, which typically the echo dot is $ 49.99, but a lot of times. It goes on sale for 39.99, so I’ll just pretend like this is a used one and put the costume that I want now notice that my text didn’t quite fit the text box that I had already drawn out.

That’S okay! I can change my mind and just resize that text box or I could change the size of my text and make the letters smaller if I wanted to so that’s pretty good, that’s about what I was hoping to do and just like I’ve done a couple of Times I can use the home button and home ribbon and align Center to make that exactly centered. Now you might notice it’s not exactly centered. Why? Because I didn’t Center the text within the box, but now that I’ve done that everything is completely centered. Okay, I’d like to do the same thing down below for the Google home mini, which is a competitor to the Amazon echo dot. So give me a second to do that and then I’ll resume the tutorial okay. So I’ve inserted another image this time of the Google home mini, and I wanted you to see this as I drag it, trying to get it to the center of the screen notice.

That publisher recognizes that. I probably want it aligned to my first image, and so it gave me a guideline, a temporary guideline, that appeared to say when I was exactly lined up, and so that’s a nice feature and it basically automatically did that for me. Okay, so there’s my flyer now, if I wanted to, I could put my phone number on here, my name etcetera, but for the most part this flyer is done and I think it looks great and it was pretty easy and quick to make. So now what? What do I do next? Well, now that I’m finished with this document, this is a Microsoft Publisher document they’re meant to be published, and so I can go here to file, and that takes me to the backstage area or backstage view. As it’s called, and at this point I can click print. It gives me a print preview and I can select the printer I want to use and then simply click print.

There are some other options down here. If you want to look at those, but in today’s world, publishing isn’t always just about printing on paper, as we all know so notice that you can also click share and you can share this or publish it as a PDF. You could send it as an attachment to a message like an email and then also there are options for exporting your publisher documents notice that you can publish HTML code to be posted online like as a web page.

You can also pack and go your publisher documents. So you can save it for photo printing. If you would like you could even save it for a commercial printer and then take it to that printer or save it for another computer to access. So there are some really good options that you have for your publisher documents. I still think most people simply print it out and publish it that way. So I hope that you found this tutorial to be helpful. I see publisher as a great tool for designing and laying out flyers handouts worksheets. Those of you that are teachers, think about what you could do with this. You could create class newsletters.

You could create posters for the wall. You could create certificates to give to the students, there’s just almost countless uses for teachers that have access to Microsoft, Publisher, if you’re interested in learning about the Amazon, echo dot or the Google home mini. I think these really are great tools to have in your home. You may also be able to use them at school and for the price I think they’re no brainers to get people often ask me, which is my favorite.

I actually like the Amazon echo dot a little bit better. It just does everything that I want it to do, and it does it very well, but the Google home Mini is also good. So if you want to learn more about these, look in the description below and I have links to more information about them, so thanks for watching, I hope you found this video to be useful.

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