Microsoft Publisher Tutorials: Creating a Publication from a Template

The easiest way to create a new publication with Microsoft Publisher is to use one of the templates that comes with the software package. The 2007 version of Publisher has a large number of these pre-made templates available that can be customized and modified to your specifications. As the templates work the same way for all types of publications in Publisher, we will look at the newsletter ones in this tutorial.

Once you’ve opened Microsoft Publisher, the first thing you want to do is choose your template. Since we will be working with newsletters, click on Newsletters in the left frame under Publication Types. Once this is done, thumbnails of all possible newsletter templates will appear in the middle frame and a larger template preview window will be seen in the right frame. Refer to the screenshot in Figure 1 at the end of this tutorial to see this display.

You can use the scroll bar to quickly take a look at all the templates available. When one catches your eye, left-click on it once and a larger preview of that template will appear in the right frame. If you decide that template isn’t right for you after viewing the larger version, simply return to the middle screen of thumbnail images and pick another. The screenshot in Figure 2 shows what the display would look like if we choose the Axis theme from the set of Classic Designs templates in Publisher 2007.

Once you’ve chosen a template, don’t create the publication just yet. The preview window in the template choosing screen also allows you to make a few more choices for your template before you begin. You will be able to change these items later so it is perfectly fine to just accept the defaults now, but this is also a chance to see how your desired color scheme will look in your chosen template before continuing.

Just underneath the template preview is an area where you can customize the colors of your template. There are a number of predefined color schemes that you can choose from or you have the option to create your own custom scheme. For now, we will choose one of the predefined options, the scheme labeled as Alpine. We will discuss how to create your own custom color scheme in a later tutorial. Take a look at Figure 3 for a closer view of the color scheme selection area.

Another option presented in the right frame of the template choice screen is page layout. Publisher actually refers to this as page size, but for the newsletter templates your choices are limited to picking between a one-page spread and a two-page spread. Check out Figure 4 for a screenshot.

Basically, the only difference between these two options is the layout of objects on the middle pages of your template. Just as the names imply, the one-page spread should be used if you expect your readers to view your publication one page at a time while the two-page spread is more of a magazine format.

Another useful thing that you can designate as you are choosing template properties is what business or personal information that you would like to be imported into your template? From the Business Information drop-down list shown in Figure 5, you can either choose from information that you have already entered or create a new entry. If you choose to create a new entry, a dialog box like the one in Figure 6 will appear on the screen so that you can input your new information.

Once all of the options have been chosen for the template, finish the publication creation process by clicking on the Create button. The template with appear in the main window of Publisher where you can now modify it by inputting your own content. See Figures 7 and 8 for screenshots. If you decide at any time that you want to make changes to your template, you can do so by clicking on Change Template in the left frame.