Newsletter: Word vs. Publisher

[Jen]

I have recently started a new job where I am responsible for putting out a
monthly newsletter. The template was developed as a Word document (Word
2000), but it's quite unusual, at least from my experience - there are text
boxes that flow into each other, some graphic elements that behave
differently from anything I've seen before, etc. (For example, if I widen one
column, everything else on the right disappears - ack!). On top of that, the
styles have been overwritten by previous user and are currently a huge mess.
If I want to continue using this template, I will rework it entirely,
probably starting entirely from scratch. This would be a very big job.

However, if I'm going to spend the time to do that, it seems like it would
make more sense to switch over to a program that's designed for these types
of publications, such as Publisher. This would also be a big job, but might
be easier in the long run.

So, my question is: is there any reason to continue using Word to make my
newsletter? Are there any advantages to Word in this situation that I may not
have thought about? I don't currently have Publisher on my computer and would
have to request it, so although I can do that, I want to be sure I'm making
the right decision before I do so.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be much appreciated!
Jen

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the newsletter will be distributed in print form or as a PDF, I would
definitely advise switching to Publisher, which will save a lot of
hair-tearing. But if you intend to distribute it digitally in raw form (that
is, not as a PDF), you'll find that many more users have Word than Publisher
(see? even you don't have it yet), and there is no good way to export
Publisher files (you can save each page as a JPEG, but there's no
single-file format).

 

[Jen]

Thanks Suzanne. Yes, I should have included in my message that the file is
always PDF'd before distribution.

I have worked in Publisher before, but not on anything too complicated. Does
it give me the same types of options for setting consistent styles, etc. as
Word does? I really want to set up a template that just lets me type in the
info I want without having to play around with font, colours, formatting etc.
every month (as the previous person did). It's just taking up way too much
time to get this newsletter out each month!

Thanks again.
Jen

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Okay, I think Publisher is still the way to go, but there will be a (short)
learning curve. I am by no means a Publisher expert; I use it primarily for
single-page, primarily graphic applications. The one (monthly) newsletter I
did at one time create was just two pages and didn't use linked text boxes,
so I don't have any real experience with that. I imagine Publisher may have
improved somewhat in the matter of styles; I found them rather frustrating
from a Word perspective, but they do exist, and you can create a template (I
think--maybe I just cannibalized one publication to create the new one each
month--don't remember). I find font and paragraph formatting more
cumbersome, tables an enigma, and the ruler all but useless.

OTOH, you can set up master pages with fixed elements, and you can add guide
lines wherever you want them to assist with placement of text and graphic
elements. And of course Publisher comes with 61 elaborate newsletter
templates, so you could probably find something you could adapt for your
purposes.

Also, note that, at least through Publisher 2003, it is not quite as easy to
PDF Publisher publications as Word ones (no Adobe add-in for Publisher, so
you have to print to the Adobe printer). But at least PDFing for a desktop
printer or for email is not bad; the process required to print color
separations to Acrobat is quite contorted! I believe Publisher 2007 uses the
same Microsoft add-in as Word 2007 to create PDFs.

 

[Jen]

Thanks again Suzanne - this is very helpful.

My secret hope is that by requesting Publisher, I will get myself upgraded,
at least to Office 2003. I'm going crazy working with 2000...I had
forgotten how many features were added by 2003 that made things a lot easier!
Not to mention the frequent crashes...

Thanks again.
Jen

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, Word 2003 is much more stable than 2000--and contains fixes for a lot
of new features that were badly implemented in Word 2002.