Completing a Design Template Publication

When you create publications using a design template, some information is added from your personal information profile, but this doesn't necessarily complete the publication for you. A number of text boxes and picture frames will probably be present in the publication; for example, a publication such as a certificate or an invitation requires that you fill in the recipient's name or the time and place of the event. So, much of the process related to completing a publication relates to replacing placeholder text and images with the appropriate content.

Editing Text in a Publication

When you work with text in Publisher, the text is held inside a frame called a text box . You learn more about creating and working with text boxes in Lesson 7, "Changing How Text Looks."

To modify or complete text entries in a publication, follow these steps:

1. To modify the contents of a text box, click the text box to select it (click anywhere on the box frame that is around the text).

   

   Zoom In When Working on Text When you need to edit text in a text frame, you might want to zoom in on the publication for a closer look. Select the View menu, point at Zoom , and then select the zoom percentage from the cascading menu.

   
   

2. Double-click the text in the text frame to select all the text (see Figure 5.2). To select a portion of the text, use click-and-drag .

   Figure 5.2. Select the text that you want to modify.

   

3. Type the appropriate text into the text frame. The selected placeholder text is deleted and replaced by the new text.

Select All the Text in a Story Publisher refers to the text in text boxes as a story . In cases where you can't see all the text that is in a text box (because the text box isn't big enough to display all the text), you can press Ctrl+A to select all the text that actually resides in the text box.

Filling a Picture Frame

Not all the additions that you need to make to a design templatebased publication are text, however. In some cases you need to fill other placeholders (such as for a company logo or a picture of the chairperson of the board) with the appropriate graphic. These graphics are held in a frame referred to as picture frames . See Lesson 8, "Working with Graphics," for more information on working with picture frames.

To fill a picture placeholder with a new picture, follow these steps:

1. Click the placeholder picture frame in the publication to select it.

2. Select the Insert menu, then point at Picture . From the cascading menu, select one of the following:

   Clip Art You can search for and select Office clip art from the Clip Art task pane.

   From File You can select a picture that you have stored on your computer.

   Empty Picture Frame You can place an empty picture frame on the page. You can then insert a picture into the frame at a later time.

   From Scanner or Camera If you have either of these devices connected to your computer, you can create a new image and place it immediately into Publisher.

Depending on your choice, you work with either the Clip Art task pane, the Insert File dialog box, or your scanner or camera. Figure 5.3 shows the Clip Art task pane after a search has been conducted for flag clip art. For more information on working with and manipulating pictures, see Lesson 8.

Figure 5.3. You can replace picture placeholders with Publisher clip art.

After you replace a placeholder item with a picture or graphic of your own, you can continue to edit the text and graphic items in the publication. The number of text frames and placeholder items that you need to edit to complete a particular publication depends on the publication itself. Typically, the more complex the publication, the more items you have to personalize.