Microsoft Publisher 2003 Tutorial

Formatting a Publication

Formatting text

Use the Formatting toolbar to quickly change the type, size, style and color of text in your text boxes:

1. Select the text you want to change. In our example newsletter, we’ll change the appearance of the headline text on the first page:

1. Select a font name from the Font box.

For our newsletter, we’ll select Arial.

1. Select a size from the Size box, or enter the number directly into the box and press Enter. For the newsletter, we’ll enter 16 (points):

Once we replace the text in the headline, it should look something like this:

1. Now, select the “2005” in the text below the newsletter title and click the Bold button on the toolbar. This applies bold formatting to the text:

You can also click the Italics and Underline buttons to italicize or underline the text. Click the buttons again to remove the formatting from the text.

Tip:

Publisher uses the same keyboard shortcuts that are available in Microsoft® Word:

1. • For bold, press Ctrl+b.
   • For italics, press Ctrl+i.
   • For underline, press Ctrl+u.

1. To change the color of the text, click the down arrow to the right of the Font Color button and pick a color from the menu that appears.

Tip:

When you pick a color, the Font Color button changes to display the new color. To apply that color to more text, select the text and click the Font Color button.

The Font dialog provides additional effects you can apply to text, such as embossing and engraving:

1. To access the Font dialog, open the Format menu and select Font.

1. Under Effects, select the effects you want to apply.

The Sample pane shows you how the font will appear.

1. Click OK.

Creating a drop cap

Drop caps are often used at the beginning of an article in a publication. To apply a drop cap:

1. Click inside the paragraph where you want to apply a drop cap.
2. From the Format menu, select Drop Cap.

The Drop Cap dialog opens.

1. Select the drop cap style you want to use.
2. You can also define a custom drop cap by selecting the Custom Drop Cap tab:

1. Here, you can specify the precise size of the drop cap. First, select a letter position. The number in the Lines field changes for each selection, but you can adjust this as necessary. Lines specifies the number of blank lines that appear before the remainder of the text. Entering 0 causes the remainder of the text to appear in line with the top of the drop cap. Entering 1 moves the remainder of the text down a line, as shown above.

Size of letters specifies the size of the drop cap, and Number of letters specifies how many letters will be dropped. In the example above, only 1 letter (the first letter) is dropped. If we entered 2, the word “In” would be dropped.

Under Select letter appearance, you can define the font, color, and style of the drop cap.

Tip:

Custom drop caps are added to the list of available drop cap styles, so you can easily reuse any style you define.

1. Click OK to close the dialog and apply the effect.

Apply schemes

When defining the options for the appearance of our example newsletter, we selected font and color schemes. A font scheme is a set of major and minor fonts associated with a publication, with the major fonts used for headlines and the minor fonts used for body text. A color scheme specifies the colors used for accents and hyperlinks in your publication.

To select a new font or color scheme for the publication:

1. Select Font Schemes or Color Schemes from the task pane menu (by clicking the down arrow), or from Publisher’s Format menu.

This opens the related task pane:

1. Select a scheme from the list.
2. The Color Schemes task pane also provides an option to define a custom color scheme:

1. 1. Click Custom color scheme at the bottom of the task pane.

The Color Schemes dialog opens.

1. 1. For each element, select a color from the drop-down menu.
   2. Click Save Scheme.
   3. In the dialog that opens, enter a name for the new color scheme.
   4. Click OK to close the Color Schemes dialog.

Insert symbols

Symbols are special characters that don’t appear on a standard keyboard. These can range from a copyright symbol to icons like smiley faces and checkmarks.

To insert a symbol:

1. Position your cursor inside the text box where you want the symbol to appear.
2. From the Insert menu, select Symbol.

The Symbol dialog opens.

1. Different fonts offer different symbol menus, though many include the same standard symbols. You can select different fronts from the drop-down menu to view all the available symbols.
2. Many standard special characters, such as the em-dash, the en-dash, the trademark symbol, and the copyright symbol, appear on the Special Characters tab.

1. Select a symbol from the menu and click Insert.
2. Click Close to close the Symbol dialog.