Creating Business Cards

[Chuck]

I have Microsoft Office 2004 for MAC. I am trying to design some
business cards. 1. How come I don't have the option of designing them
from scratch and not use a template? 2. Now that I used the template
to design one card, how do I get the other cards to match? For example
when you pull up the business card template you are going to see
several cards laid out on the screen. I put my companies logo and all
my information to complete 1 card the way I wanted it to look. Is
there a way I can just copy and paste that one to the other cards on
the screen?

I have Microsoft Publisher on my PC and have made business cards with
ease with that but it seems complicated doing it with WORD 2004.


Thanks,

 

[Elliott Roper]

I have Microsoft Office 2004 for MAC. I am trying to design some
business cards. 1. How come I don't have the option of designing them
from scratch and not use a template? 2. Now that I used the template
to design one card, how do I get the other cards to match? For example
when you pull up the business card template you are going to see
several cards laid out on the screen. I put my companies logo and all
my information to complete 1 card the way I wanted it to look. Is
there a way I can just copy and paste that one to the other cards on
the screen?

I have Microsoft Publisher on my PC and have made business cards with
ease with that but it seems complicated doing it with WORD 2004.

Have you considered using Excel? Seriously!
It is excellent when you come to repeat all the cards.
I maintained reasonably classy cards for everyone in the company in a
single Excel document.
You can place the graphics with far more precision (think row height)
than you can in Word, and it is a simple matter to use formulas to
fiddle with everyone's name and job title.

It was a pity that the laser's printing rubbed off so easily.

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Chuck:

1) You do. The "template" you are using is simply a "table". You can
start with a blank document and make your own table if you like. In the
templates, someone else has done the fiddling around to make the sizes of
the table cells match the pre-cut stock you can buy.

2) Yes. Instead of using tables you can use cross-references.

You can create one business card in one cell of your table, then bookmark
it. Then create cross-references to the bookmark in each of the other
cells. The cross-references will automatically copy whatever is inside the
bookmark each time you refresh them (by Update Fields).

You can get more detail on bookmarks and cross-references in the Word Help.
Yes, you guessed it "Update Fields" is fully described in the Help too

3) Yes. You have a job here that starkly reveals the difference between a
word-processor and a page layout program. Word is a word-processor. It is
designed to "flow" text and position it automatically. You have a job that
requires the text to be fixed in position and to control the position of the
text accurately. That's what a page layout program does.

If they changed Word to do this, it would not be as good as a
word-processor. You really need a page layout program if you are going to
do a lot of this. But if your business cards are the only thing you are
going to make that requires precise layout, it's not worth spending money
for an extra program. In which case, either do it on your PC, or work
slowly and carefully in Word. You "can" force Word to lay things out like a
page layout program (although it will never be as easy or as accurate as a
proper layout program).

Hope this helps
--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Sandy Foster]

2) Yes. Instead of using tables you can use cross-references.

You can create one business card in one cell of your table, then bookmark
it. Then create cross-references to the bookmark in each of the other
cells. The cross-references will automatically copy whatever is inside the
bookmark each time you refresh them (by Update Fields).

You can get more detail on bookmarks and cross-references in the Word Help.
Yes, you guessed it "Update Fields" is fully described in the Help too

John, this sounds very interesting! I frequently make several different
kinds of business cards, and I've always made them with the templates,
which is fine. I make one card and then copy and paste it to the other
cells in the table.

I've looked at cross-reference and update fields in the Help files, but
I have to say I don't really understand how to do this. I selected Table
as the reference type and Entire caption for "Insert reference to".
However, I have no idea of what to put into the "For which caption" box
-- even if it would let me put anything in, which it doesn't seem
inclined to do.

Do you know of a place where I could get more detailed information on
how to use this function to make business cards? If not, it's not a
terribly onerous chore to use the same copy/paste technique as I've done
in the past. <G>

Thanks!

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Sandy:

No, you missed a step

Where I said "bookmark it", I meant bookmark the cell content within the
cell, up to but not including the End-of-Cell marker.

You then insert a cross-reference of kind "Bookmark", not Table. This
copies only what you have encased in the bookmark.

Otherwise you will suck the whole table into itself and the results get a
bit embarrassing

Personally, I think copying the cells the way you have been doing is a lot
more straightforward, but it doesn't enable easy updating

Cheers

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Sandy Foster]

Hi Sandy:

No, you missed a step

Aha! Yes, you're right -- I completely missed that first step. :S

Where I said "bookmark it", I meant bookmark the cell content within the
cell, up to but not including the End-of-Cell marker.

You then insert a cross-reference of kind "Bookmark", not Table. This
copies only what you have encased in the bookmark.

Otherwise you will suck the whole table into itself and the results get a
bit embarrassing

Personally, I think copying the cells the way you have been doing is a lot
more straightforward, but it doesn't enable easy updating

I have to agree with you there, John -- both about the
straightforwardness and about the easy updating. But I couldn't resist
trying it, and it does work when I don't skip that first step. Thanks
for the extra help -- I do appreciate it.

 

[little_creature]

Hi Chuck:

1) You do. The "template" you are using is simply a "table". You can
start with a blank document and make your own table if you like. In the
templates, someone else has done the fiddling around to make the sizes of
the table cells match the pre-cut stock you can buy.

2) Yes. Instead of using tables you can use cross-references.

You can create one business card in one cell of your table, then bookmark
it. Then create cross-references to the bookmark in each of the other
cells. The cross-references will automatically copy whatever is inside the
bookmark each time you refresh them (by Update Fields).

You can get more detail on bookmarks and cross-references in the Word Help.
Yes, you guessed it "Update Fields" is fully described in the Help too

3) Yes. You have a job here that starkly reveals the difference betweena
word-processor and a page layout program. Word is a word-processor. It is
designed to "flow" text and position it automatically. You have a job that
requires the text to be fixed in position and to control the position of the
text accurately. That's what a page layout program does.

If they changed Word to do this, it would not be as good as a
word-processor. You really need a page layout program if you are going to
do a lot of this. But if your business cards are the only thing you are
going to make that requires precise layout, it's not worth spending money
for an extra program. In which case, either do it on your PC, or work
slowly and carefully in Word. You "can" force Word to lay things out like a
page layout program (although it will never be as easy or as accurate as a
proper layout program).

Hope this helps
--

Don't wait for your answer, click here:http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltdhttp://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

One of free page layout program which I run on PC is scribus
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/DTP-Prepress/Scribus.shtml

I have never tried it on Mac, but you can. On PC it sometimes was a
bit slow, but that I calculated as a price for being free. Otherwise
it's quite handy, it supports ICC profiles, so you can mange your
colours.

 

[Rafael Montserrat]

John,

I can't get http://www.word.mvps.org/
to open. I tried about 4 times and I got:
"Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.word.mvps.org."

Best regards

Rafael

PS I¹ve got a lot of answers to other queries I've posted that I haven't
gotten to yet but will.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I can't get http://www.word.mvps.org/
to open. I tried about 4 times and I got:
"Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.word.mvps.org."

the domain appears to be down. Try back later...

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

Hi Rafael:

Thanks. Neither can I...

Apparently the Hard Disk has failed on the server that hosts (literally...)
thousands of sites. They are running chkdsk and it was projected to
complete by around Tuesday, 15 May 2007 at 07:00:00 UTC.

Sorry about that. I should point out that the server is owned by one of us,
who pays for both it and its bandwidth out of his back pocket. He hosts the
site completely without charge to us. So we seriously can't complain if it
works "most of the time"

And before anyone starts: NO, we will not allow Microsoft to host the site.
If we did, they would want to "influence" what we say about them on the site
(they already try from time to time...). We demand the right to bring you
completely independent advice. Which means "NO" to any other commercial
entity also. Most of us consider the Microsoft products we support a bit
like a smaller sister/brother. We demand the right to point out ALL of
their shortcomings

Cheers

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]