6. Customizing Publications
In this chapter, you learn techniques for working with business information sets. Topics include the following:
Creating a New Business Information Set
Inserting Business Information
Editing a Business Information Set
You’ve covered a lot of ground up to this point—give yourself a pat on the back! The Publisher essentials have been discussed, so it’s a great opportunity to step back and look at ways to automate the process even more. Most Publisher users use templates to generate the bulk of their publications. Why? Because it’s fast and easy, and they produce professionally designed publications. Is there a way to save even more time when using templates?
There is—it’s called a business information set. You create one for your company, and from then on Publisher uses it to fill in those pieces of information in the templates. Even better—you can create multiple business information sets, so you can customize publications for clients, departments, family/personal, and so on.
Creating a Business Information Set
A business information set contains contact information: name, title, company name, address, phone/fax, email, taglines, and logos. They are fairly straightforward to put together. It won’t take long before you appreciate the time-savings when you see all the contact information filled in for you.
1. Click the File tab to switch to the Backstage area.
2. Click Edit Business Information to open the Create New Business Information Set dialog box.
3. Type your name here.
4. Enter your job title here.
5. Type the name of your company or organization here.
6. Type the full address (street address, city, state, and ZIP code).
7. Replace the sample phone numbers and email address with your own.
8. Type My info in the Business Information set name box.
9. Click Save to create the My Info business information set.
10. Click to update the current publication with the information.
11. Click Close when you are finished.
Inserting Business Information
Small business owners learn quickly how to squeeze the last bit of productivity out of their technology. Publisher has thousands of dollars of professional design services built in to the templates.
The more you use templates, the more you will see that the same pieces of contact information get filled in over and over again. Publisher automates that for you, too, with a business information set. You can create as many sets as you need.
1. Click the File tab to switch to the Backstage area.
2. Click Edit Business Information to open the Business Information dialog box.
3. Click the down arrow to open the list of business information sets.
4. Select the business information set that you want to use.
5. Click Update Publication to insert the information into the current publication.
Editing a Business Information Set
Maintaining the business information sets you have saved in Publisher is a lot like maintaining an address book. You have to edit the information periodically to keep it up to date. When people change their phone number or email address, simply edit the information set and save your changes. This is not unlike editing a contact in Outlook.
1. Click the File tab to switch to the Backstage area.
2. Click Edit Business Information to open the Business Information dialog box.
3. Click the down arrow to open the list of business information sets.
4. Click the business information set that you want to edit.
5. Click Edit to display the Edit Business Information Set dialog box.
6. Click in the item that you want to edit.
7. Make the necessary changes.
8. Click Save to save your changes and return to the Business Information Set dialog box.
9. If you like, click Update Publication to insert the information into the current publication.
10. Click Close to clear the dialog box.
Inserting a Company Logo
Adding a company logo is one of the many uses of the Add Logo feature. You might, for example, use it to add a photograph. Actually, for a busy real estate company that needs to personalize Open House flyers for each agent, adding the agents’ picture to their business information set is a great timesaver.
1. In the Backstage, click Edit Business Information to open the Business Information dialog box.
2. Open the list of business information sets, and select the one you want to add the picture to.
3. Click Edit to display the Edit Business Information Set dialog box.
4. Click Add Logo to open the Insert Picture dialog box.
5. If necessary, browse to the folder that contains the picture you want to insert.
6. Select the image you want to use.
7. Click Insert to add it to the business information set.
8. Click Save to save your changes and return to the Business Information dialog box.
9. If necessary, click Update Publication to insert the photo/logo into the current publication.
10. Click Close to clear the dialog box.
