How to Use Catalog Merge in Publisher 2010

Using Catalog Merge in Publisher 2010

Insert and Format WordArt

WordArt is a text frame in which the text can be warped into different shapes or designs. Below is an example of WordArt.

Find the WordArt button on the Insert tab. .

Clicking the button reveals a drop down menu with all of your WordArt options. Make a selection. This opens the Edit Word Art Text window.

Here you can select a font and its size, and enter your own text. Click OK when finished. A text box with the customized WordArt inside of it will appear in your document.

When the WordArt is selected, you'll see a small yellow square. That square is actually a handle that you can drag to change the way the text warps. For instance, in the following example, we simply dragged that yellow square to the right. Look at how it altered our WordArt.

Catalog Merge

Instead of telling you what Catalog Merge is, we're going to show you how it works. Let's say you are a retailer with 24 high-quality hair care products and you want to create a catalog for them. You're going to want three items on each page because you need room for the price, pictures, and description. That comes to eight pages in all.

The easy way would be to compile your product list, then create a single template using the Catalog Merge tools. When you are finished, Publisher will automatically take all of the information in your product list, and insert it into your template, creating 8 individual pages, with 3 products on each page.

Let's see how it's done.

Create a document or open an existing one. If you are creating a new document from scratch, you will probably want to add a few extra pages for the cover and other interior pages. When you're ready to create your catalog, select the page you want the catalog to begin on, then click the Insert tab.

The Catalog Pages button can be found on the far left, in the Pages group.

Go ahead and click the Catalog Pages button. This will open the Catalog Pages Format tab, as illustrated below. If this is the first time you've used catalog pages in the current document, most of the buttons will be greyed out and inactive. They will remain this way until you create or select a data list.

Creating a Data List

Click the button on the far left called the Add List button.

Here we have the option of creating a new list, using an existing one, or choosing a list from our Outlook Contacts. Since we're going to be making a catalog of shampoo products, we're obviously not going to use our Outlook Contacts.

Click the Type New List button.

Here we have the opportunity to create our list from scratch. To add an item, click the New Entry button. This activates a new row. Click the first cell of the row, type in your information, then hit the Tab key to jump to the next cell, and so on

If the column headings at the top of the list aren't appropriate for you, or you'd like to add more fields, click the Customize Columns field. Publisher will tell you that before you can continue, the list you are making must be saved. It will ask you if you want to do this now. Click Yes.

The buttons on this window are pretty much self-explanatory. You can rename an item by selecting it and clicking the rename button. You can add or delete items, or move them up or down in the list. Click OK when finished. This will return you to the previous window.

You may notice the field titled "Picture." Here you cannot use an actual image. Instead, you must use the address of the image. For instance, if the image is located on your computer, in your documents folder, the address of the image might be "C:"User"Your Name"Documents"Picture Name".

Click OK when finished adding all of your products. Publisher will then ask you where you want to save the list, and what you want to call it. Type in a name, select the location, and click OK.

Using an Existing Data List

Now let's go back and look at the Use Existing List button.

With this button you can use any data list you've already created, either with Publisher, or Access or Excel or any other compatible spreadsheet program. Clicking it will open a window asking you to locate the file on your computer.

Once a file is selected, the list will open in a new window.

In this window, you have the opportunity to review the items in the list, as well as select which items you want to include in your catalog. In the example above, the items with a check mark indicate items that will be included. Uncheck the box on items you don't want to include.

Now look below at the Data sources box. This shows you what list you are using. Selecting it will make the Edit, Remove, and Refresh buttons active.

The Match Fields button allows you to match fields in your data list with fields available for your catalog merge. For instance, the data field in an Excel spreadsheet might simply be named "Field A". This button allows you to identify Field A as "Product", "Description" or any other customized field.

Once you've created your list or selected one, it is time to create your catalog pages. Click OK.

In the Navigation Pane on the left side of your document, you'll see something like this:

That group of pages labeled "2", represents your catalog. You can add individual pages before it or after it, and you can even move 2 around as a group, as if it were only a single page. You can also delete it just like any other individual page.

Creating a Catalog Page Template

As we said at the beginning of this section, what you're going to do is create a template that Publisher will use as a guide for entering all of the information in your list.

After you create your list and activate the Catalog Page features, you're going to see something like this on the page:

This is the default Catalog Merge area. As stated earlier, though, we're going to want three products per page, so we're going to select that layout from the Layout section of the Ribbon.

Publisher has ten predefined layouts for you to use. You can select any layout at any time, even after you've entered your merge fields, and Publisher will automatically make the adjustments.

You can also create your own layout by using the Rows and Columns button on the right.

Want to learn more? Take an online course in MS Publisher 2010.

Adding rows and columns with this tool is just like inserting a new table. Just remember that each cell essentially represents each item in your list.

The Fill Order button lets you decide how Publisher should fill each of those cells, either across then down, or down then across.

The Repeating Areas option lets you choose the way in which the merge areas are repeated. Look at the example below.

Now that we've selected a layout, we can enter our fields.

To the right of the Layout group on the ribbon, we will find the Fields button. This button gives us access to the fields in our list that we created earlier:

These fields will appear in your document as placeholder text. For instance, if we were to click on the Product field, it'd appear in our document as <<Product>>. This represents all of the information that was entered into the Product field of the list we created earlier.

This is what the repeating field might look like when finished:

This is a screenshot of the actual page in Publisher. The section at the top represents the template. Note the placeholder text. The second section shows you what the catalog entry looks like when the placeholder text has been substituted with field entries. Publisher does this automatically.

You can use the text tools to change any of the attributes of the placeholders. For instance, if you increase the font size of the <<Product>> placeholder, the font size in each subsequent entry will also change automatically.

You can also add pictures and other objects. Just remember, anything you put in the merge field will show up in every other field.

To the right of the Catalog Tools Format tab of the ribbon, you'll find the Preview Page group.

From here, you can preview the results, locate any entry, and even exclude a selected entry from the catalog.

Merging the Catalog

It is now time to merge the catalog. This is the part of process that Publisher creates all of the individual pages it needs in order to display all of the items in your list.

On the far right of the ribbon, you will find the Merge group. You can elect to merge your catalog into a new document, add it to an existing one, or just print it.

Clicking Merge to New creates an entirely new document based on the document you originally created the Catalog Merge for. Publisher automatically inserts all of the necessary pages into your document, as illustrated in the following example.

As you can see, three new pages were added to our document with all of the catalog entries on them.

On the right side of the screen you will see this:

This is just Publisher letting you know that your catalog was created and that you can edit each page. You can also return to the original publication, or save the current one.

If you were to click the Add To Existing button, Publisher would give you the opportunity to locate the document on your computer and select it. It would then enter all of your catalog entries into that document, creating as many pages as necessary.

The Print button creates the pages and allows you to print them. You can also preview the pages before printing.

Correcting Text and Design Errors

Publisher gives you a number of tools to catch and correct the errors in your document. These can be design errors or spelling errors. In thissection, we're going to show you exactly how you can use these tools to keep your documents clean and consistent, and to avoid unseen issues that might derail your attempts to have them reproduced correctly by a commercial printer.

Check your Spelling

Most of our modern devices check our spelling for us--from iPods, to iPads, to personal computers to smart phones. Publisher is no different. It's not as full-featured or as sophisticated as that of a dedicated word processor such as MS Word, but it's more than capable. After all, the focus of Publisher is designing documents. You're probably not going to write that novel on it.

Just like in Word, you can find the spell checking function on the Review tab. Let's look at it.

To check the spelling in a story (and remember, when we refer to a "story" in Publisher, we mean all the text in a single text box, or all the text threaded between several text boxes), select the story then click the Spelling button. This will activate a dialog. The dialog looks like this:

The process begins wherever the cursor is located. If the cursor is in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of a story, it will work its way to end of the story, then jump back to the beginning and eventually work its way back to where the cursor was originally located.

As the spell checker works its way through the document, it will pause on misspelled words. In the example above, the dictionary didn't recognize the word "centre" and stopped on it. This is, of course, European spelling, and if you are writing for a European audience, you can choose to Add it to the dictionary or choose to ignore it. You can use the Ignore All button to ignore every instance of the word "centre" in the story. (In a moment, I'll tell you how to choose another language.)

As you can see, Publisher tries to guess what you were getting at and automatically inserts what it thinks you were trying to say in the Change to box. If this is the wrong word, you can select a word from the list of suggestions by clicking on it, or you can manually type the actual word in the Change to box. To make the change, click the Change button. Use the Change All button to change every instance of the word in your document to the new word.

Click the Check all stories box to have spell checker go through every story in your document.

To change options in spell checker, either click Options in the Check Spelling window (as seen in the lower right hand corner of the illustration above) or go to the File tab, click Options, then Proofing.

Here you can choose to ignore words in uppercase, or words that contain numbers, internet addresses, etc.

Choosing the Check spelling as you type option will underline in red any misspellings in your document. Below is an example:

As we mentioned earlier, you may want to use British spellings. To do this, click the Custom Dictionaries button.

Choose a language in the Dictionary language drop down menu. Here you can create a new custom dictionary, or remove one.

To see or edit the words in any dictionary, including custom made ones, select the dictionary, then click the Edit Word List button. A new window will open that looks like this:

You can search through words using the Word(s) field, or scroll through them by clicking the Dictionary field and using your mouse wheel. Add new words by typing it into the Word(s) field. Select a word to delete it. Click OK when finished.

Use AutoCorrect AutoCorrect works in tandem with spell checker, except that instead of just alerting you to typos and other common errors, it automatically fixes them. For instance, you might forget to capitalize the first letter of a sentence. Instead of having to go back and fix it (and interrupting your flow of thoughts), Publisher capitalizes it automatically.

Let's take a closer look at some of our options. To view them, go to the File tab and click options. From the list on the left, click Proofing. Now click AutoCorrect Options.

As you can see in the above illustration, Publisher will correct two initial capitals. This is actually a common error, especially for very fast touch-typists. They hold that shift key for a fraction of a second longer than they should. Publisher can also capitalize the first letter of sentences, as we said earlier, the first letter of table cells, names of days, etc.

Now look at the window near the bottom. Here is a list of keystrokes that Publisher will replace and what it will replace them with. For instance, (c) will be replaced with the copyright symbol ©. This is also where you can create custom replacements.

Sometimes Publisher will automatically correct something you don't want it to. To correct this, click the Exceptions button.

Here you can see stock exceptions and add your own. Click OK when finished.

Use Design Checker You might be tempted to dismiss Design Checker as something similar to spell checker. Don't. Publisher does not look at your document from an aesthetic standpoint. It won't say something like, "You have an image over here, and it should be over there to create a sense of balance;" or "Your headlines are in blue, they should be in black."

Instead, Design Checker points out potential errors that could mean your document won't print correctly.

To find the Design Checker button, go to the File tab and click the Info group. This is what it looks like:

When you click this button, Publisher returns you to your document, where a pane opens on the right.

Here is a list of potential issues in our document. These are not necessarily bad things, or things that should be changed. You may, in fact, have had your reasons to do things the way you did. You do nothave to act on any of the potential errors--Publisher is just pointing them out to you.

Click on any item listed in the design checker pane to jump to the error's location in your document.

In the illustration above, it says that the publication is in RGB mode. But for now suffice it to say that RGB stands for Red Green and Blue. It is a mode for reproducing color. Commercial printers use CMYK, or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black), to reproduce colors correctly on the page, while most monitors and many home printers use RGB. Therefore, if you were going to send this document to a commercial printer, you'd definitely want to change the color mode to CMYK. These are the type of design issues that Design Checker alerts you to.

At the top of the Design Checker pane are boxes you can check to change the parameters. You can have Publisher make general design checks, commercial printing checks, website checks, or email checks.

To change Design Checker options, click the Design Check Options button at the bottom of the pane. A new window will open.

From within this window, you can sort the design issues by description, page number, or status (either fixed or unfixed). If you'd like to see only the uncorrected issued, check the Remove fixed items box. You can also choose to include or exclude master pages.

Clicking the Checks tab takes you to a new set of options.

Here you choose which potential errors Publisher should look for. All items are checked by default, but you can exclude items by clicking on an item to uncheck it.

Click OK when finished.