Microsoft
Publisher 2002
"Great for Creating a Document For Print or the Web!" |
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Microsoft Publisher 2002 is an easy-to-use desktop publishing program designed for home users who want to create products, such as greeting cards, award and gift certificates, airplanes, and origami, and small to medium-sized business users who want to create professional-looking marketing and business materials, such as newsletters, catalogs, brochures and Web sites, without the assistance of a designer or the high learning curve of a professional desktop publishing program. Introduced in 1991, Microsoft Publisher has been around for 10 years, and with this seventh edition, it's become a well-balanced and efficient desktop publishing tool. Publisher 2002 incorporates the following: many of the popular productivity and ease-of-use features of the Microsoft Office suite and the new Office XP; new design templates; expanded commercial printing options; and enhanced Web and e-mail publishing features. Publisher has always occupied a unique spot in the desktop publishing category. It has more features, with its customizable business templates, design expertise, and complete page layout options, than its competitors in its category; yet, unlike high-end design programs, it takes less time to learn and has a lower price. Microsoft Publisher 2002 is no longer included with the Professional Edition of Microsoft Office. It is only available as a standalone product. As of this date, there is no Macintosh version. Pricing: $129 for the full product; $99 for upgrades from previous versions. See the Microsoft Web site for tips, downloads, tutorials, & a wealth of other material: http://www.microsoft.com/publisher |
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Beginners, intermediate, and advanced computer users. Microsoft Publisher 2002 can be used by just about anyone. The wizards, templates, and color schemes make it a great choice for beginners. Yet the Web and print options make it usable for businesses that want a sophisticated output. | |
New and Enhanced Features:
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Familiar Office Features | |
Microsoft has overhauled the Publisher by adopting the new user interface of Office XP. This streamlined interface offers consistency between Office and Publisher by incorporating popular Office features such as customizable toolbars, Print Preview, Headers and Footers, a Thesaurus, Mail Merge, Search, the Office Clipboard, AutoRecover, Multiple Documents, and Office Art features, such as the WordArt module, the Picture Toolbar, and AutoShapes. I especially liked the new look and consistency between the interface of Word and Publisher. It's great for beginner designers who have experience in Word but are new to the field of desktop publishing, as it reduces the learning between applications. |
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Task Panes | |
Consistent with Office, XP, Publisher 2002 features new Task Panes. The Task Panes integrate common productivity features with the Wizard Pane found in previous versions of Publisher. You get visual previews of designs, layout options, font schemes, color schemes and more. When you choose an item from a Task Pane, your publication is updated immediately. Some of the panes are unique to Publisher and some are common to other Office applications. The Task Panes are another feature that I liked. Everything is right at hand with this single integrated view. You can click on the image to the left for a view of the following Task Panes: New Publication by Type; New Publication by Design; Options; Publication Designs; Page Content; Color Schemes; Mail Merge; Styles & Formatting; Search; and Insert Clip Art. | |
Design Sets | |
Microsoft has not forgotten Publisher's design features, as the program has an expanded selection of preset design options. You can choose from 15 new Master Sets (for a total of 35). In addition, Publisher includes 15 specialty sets for documents such as menus and fund-raising materials. The Master Sets help you maintain a consistent look and identity across your business publications. Each set includes fully customizable templates for the most common publication types, such as newsletters, brochures, flyers, Web sites, business cards, and catalogs. Many rival desktop programs offer templates, but they can be be unsophisticated and amateurish examples rather than ones that are appropriate for business documents. Publisher's Master Sets are actually quite tasteful and usable. Click on the image to the left to see a view of two sets. A complete visual list of the new publication designs can be found in the Publisher Gallery at http://www.microsoft.com/publisher. | |
Font Schemes | |
The Font Schemes Task Pane shows 25 coordinated sets of fonts that can be applied to any publication. Font schemes work like color schemes. Instead of matched color hues, though, font schemes provide you with a set of typefaces that work well together. With intelligent font mapping, when you switch to a different font scheme, all of the copy in your publication is updated for a consistent look. | |
Word Document Wizard | |
You can now open, edit and format basic Microsoft Word 97/2000/2002 documents within Publisher using the new Import Word Options Task Pane. Formatting, such as text styles, paragraph formats, and headers or footers, and graphics remain intact, and you can also include images and tables. You can then apply additional formatting, such as columns, or use Publisher's tools to modify the document. Publisher also allows you to bring in a Word document with inline graphics, and the pictures will be correctly positioned in the text flow. It's now easy to create a document in Word, then use Publisher for design content, without doubling your time in reformatting copied content. This is a very convenient feature. | |
Office Clipboard | |
The Office Clipboard allows you to collect text and graphic items (up to 24 items) from any number of Office documents or other programs and then paste them into your document, in any order. The Office Clipboard works with the standard Copy and Paste commands. You just copy an item to the Office Clipboard to add it to your collection, then paste it from the Office Clipboard into your Publisher document. The copied items appear on the Office Clipboard Task Pane. You can paste items from the Office Clipboard individually, or all at once. | |
Smart Tags | |
Publisher supports two of the Smart Tags found in Office XP. These tags are buttons that give you the option to alter changes. The Smart Tags in Publisher include the Paste Options Smart Tag and the AutoCorrect Options Smart Tag. The Paste Options Tag allows you to decide whether you want to paste you data as you originally copied it or change the style to fit the style of the document into which you are pasting it. The AutoCorrect Tag lets you undo an autocorrection, choose not to have that correction take place in the future, and access the AutoCorrect options. The AutoCorrect, though, works differently in Word and Publisher. In Publisher the AutoCorrect Smart Tag works on character-level formats, but not paragraph-level formats as it does in Word. Thus you can correct an improperly capitalized word, but you can't use the Smart Tag to reverse an auto-numbering scheme. Besides this difference, the Smart Tags are handy and a time-saver. | |
Save as Picture | |
The new Save as Picture option is one of the most useful features in Publisher 2002. You can select objects on a page or an entire publication page, group them together, and then save the entire selection as a picture. This is an excellent way to create mastheads, logos and other designs within Publisher, save them in a file format for use on the Web or print, and then reuse them within other applications. Files can be saved as GIF, TIFF, JPEG, and PNG, and many other formats. The image shows a logo that was created in Publisher and saved as a GIF for use in other documents. | |
Process Color Plus Spot Color | |
Printing options have been expanded. Publisher 2000 introduced cost-effective spot-color, commercial printing by creating or converting publications to one or two colors plus black. Many projects, though, require matching Pantone colors to business colors, and thus more options than three colors are needed. Publisher 2002 supports up to a total of 12 spot colors. Furthermore, there is now support for process color and spot color in a single publication. Being able to combine process colors and spot colors within the same publication is useful for publications such as brochures that include color photographs (printed using process color printing) and specific business colors for logos and layout (using Pantone spot colors). | |
Web Support | |
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Publisher 2002 supports HTML as a file format. You can start from scratch with the Web Site Wizard, or AutoConvert an existing brochure or newsletter into a Web site. When you save any publication directly to HTML, the resulting page appears exactly as it was designed complete with all fonts and even advanced multi-column layouts. You can even reopen the HTML file back into Publisher and change the layout or re-edit a graphic. This is convenient for inexperienced Web designers. One drawback, though, is that the subsequent edited page is packed with XML-based code which increases the file size. Still, this is a convenient way to produce Web pages. Another great feature is the ability to send a single-page document as an HTML e-mail message, or as an attachment. Sending a document as a message means that because it is sent in the "universal" HTML format, recipients don't need to have Publisher installed to view the document, just HTML-capable e-mail abilities. |
Tools on the Web | |
The support for Visual Basic for Applications in Publisher 2002 extends the functionality of the program through new Tools on the Web, online marketing tools and services from Microsoft bCentral. The bCentral Web site is: http://www.bcentral.com. Tools on the consists of ListBuilder, FastCounter and LinkExchange Banner and offers you the following options:
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Wish List | |
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With each new version, Publisher has just gotten better and better, which makes it the top choice for desktop publishing for home and small to medium businesses. There are more tools, features, and options in Publisher 2002, but there isn't any increase in skills necessary to create professional and sophisticated material. With the addition of these Office features, Publisher now has a more robust toolset. The new design aides, including the new Task Panes with visual previews, really take the guesswork out of choosing fonts, colors, and other design elements that need to work together. The consistency in tools and user interface between Office and Word makes it easier than ever for Office users to use Publisher for page-layout tasks. The program seems stable and trouble free. There are a few additions that I would like to see and I have put them in the Wish List above. Publisher 2002, with its automated design functions, range of templates from sophisticated to whimsical, and its thrifty price is certainly a worthwhile upgrade, and an excellent choice for first-time users. |
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