The Design Checker reviews your publication for a variety of design and layout problems. It identifies potential problems
and provides options to fix them.
Important Be sure to run the Design Checker before you publish a publication on a desktop printer, pack it to go to a commercial printer, send it in e-mail, or publish it onto the Web, or after you convert one type of publication to another type.
You can specify the types of problems that the Design Checker looks for in the Design Checker Options dialog box. For example, if you are preparing a publication for printing at a commercial printing service and you want to use more than two spot colors in your publication, open the Design Checker Options dialog box, click the Checks tab, and then clear the More than two spot colors option so that it will not check for more than two spot colors in your publication.
Design Checker task pane
When you open the Design Checker task pane, it dynamically updates the list of problems as they occur or as you fix them.
Run general design checks Select this option to check for design problems, such as empty text boxes, that may adversely impact your publication.
Run commercial printing checks Select this option to check for problems, such as pictures in RGB mode, that may adversely impact printing your publication at a commercial printing business.
Run web site checks Select this option to check for problems, such as pictures without alternative text, that may adversely impact your Web site publication.
Run e-mail checks (current page only) Select this option to check for problems, such as text that contains a hyphenation, which may cause gaps in the message when it is viewed in certain e-mail viewers.
Select an item to fix The Design Checker task pane lists the problems that are found in the publication. Each problem listed includes a description of the problem and where the problem is located. Most problems occur on a specific page. However, some problems affect the entire publication.
Close Design Checker Click this button to stop the Design Checker and close the task pane. When you close the Design Checker, it will not run in the background until you start it again (Tools menu, Design Checker).
Design Checker Options Click this link to open the Design Checker Options dialog box, where you can set display options for the problems that are listed in the Design Checker task pane. You can also select a page range to check, or you can select specific checks.
Design Checker Options dialog box
Use the settings in the Design Checker Options dialog box to change how the Design Checker task pane displays problems in the publication and determines which problems to display.
General tab
Select options that affect how the Design Checker task pane displays the problems it finds, and then set which pages the Design Checker will check.Display Options
Sort by Select one of the following options:
Remove fixed items Select this option to remove problems from the list of items after they are fixed. The Design Checker updates the list automatically whenever you make a change.
Page Range
Select a page range that you want the Design Checker to check.
- All Select this option to check all pages in the publication.
- Check master page(s) Select this option to include all master pages when you select All as the page range.
- Current page(s) Select this option to check only the current page(s).
Checks tab
Select the check boxes for the checks that you want the Design Checker to run. The selected checks will run only if the publication is set up in a way that requires them. For example, selected checks that apply to a Web publication will not run if you are checking a print publication.
In the Show list, the following groups of checks are available:
- All checks This includes all the options.
- General checks This includes the checks that are relevant to creating publications that will be printed on a desktop printer.
- Commercial printing checks This includes all the checks that are relevant to the commercial printing process.
- Web site checks This includes all the checks that are relevant to creating Web sites.
- E-mail checks This includes all the checks that are relevant to creating e-mail messages.
General checks
| Check |
Action performed |
| Object encroaches nonprinting region |
This check lists as a problem any object that is close enough to the page edge to be in the nonprintable region of most desktop printers. This check assumes that you are printing to a desktop printer. |
| Object partially off page |
This check assumes that you are printing to a desktop printer. In some cases, a desktop printer cannot print a bleed (bleed: the extent to which a picture runs off the printed page.). |
| Object is not visible |
This check looks for objects that cannot be seen on a page. The object may be completely covered by another object, or it may blend into a background object of the same color. |
| Object has no line or fill/Text box is empty |
This check looks for objects that have no opaque attributes. The object may be an AutoShape (AutoShapes: A group of ready-made shapes that includes basic shapes, such as rectangles and circles, plus a variety of lines and connectors, block arrows, flowchart symbols, stars and banners, and callouts.) with no line or fill, or it may be a text box that contains no text. |
| Object has transparency |
This check looks for objects that have a transparent color applied to them. Objects with transparent colors print unpredictably to PostScript (PostScript: A page description language used by printers and imagesetters.) and PCL printers. |
| Page has space below top margin |
This check looks for pages where no object touches or is above the top margin. |
| Low-resolution picture |
This check looks for pictures whose effective resolution is less than 96 dots per inch (dpi). This check assumes that you are printing to a high-resolution printer or imagesetter (imagesetter: A high resolution output device that prints to paper or film, or directly to a press plate. Publications that will be commercially printed are usually output from an imagesetter as the first step toward going to press.) that requires high-resolution pictures for best printing results. |
| Picture is missing |
This check looks for instances where a picture is a linked picture (linked picture: A picture that links to a high-resolution image file that is stored outside of the publication file. If the linked picture is changed in an image-editing program, you can update the linked picture in the publication file.) and the external linked file is missing or moved so that the link is broken. |
| Picture is modified |
This check looks for any linked picture
that has not been updated after the picture on the hard drive or network has been modified in an image-editing program. |
| Picture is not scaled proportionally |
This check looks for resized pictures that have been resized of which one dimension has been resized greater than the other. |
| Story with text in overflow area |
This check looks for any
text box or AutoShape that contains part of a story (story: Text that's contained within a single text box or a chain of linked text boxes.) that is not visible because it is in overflow (overflow: Text that does not fit within a text box. The text is hidden until it can be flowed into a new text box, or until the text box it overflows is resized to include it.). |
| Story on scratch area |
This check looks for instances in which a linked text box or AutoShape that contains part of a story is on the scratch area (scratch area: The area that surrounds a page in Publisher that is used to hold objects that are not currently on a page. Objects in the scratch area will not print and will not export as part of a Web page.). |
Commercial printing checks
| Check |
Action performed |
| More than two spot colors |
This check looks for the use of more than two spot colors (spot color: Premixed color matched to a standard color guide, such as PANTONE.) in a publication that is set up to print spot-color separations or process-color (process colors: The four transparent inks (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that are used in commercial printing to produce color photographic images and a wide range of solid colors.) and spot-color separations. |
| Unused spot colors |
This check looks for instances in which you have added a spot-color ink to your ink list, but it has not been used in the publication. This check runs if you have set up your publication for spot-color printing or spot-color and process-color printing. |
| Publication is in RGB mode |
This check looks for instances where your publication is set to print in RGB (RGB: A system that describes colors as a mixture of red (R), green (G), and blue (B). The color is defined as a set of three values (R,G,B). Using 0 (zero) percent of each color produces black; using 100 percent of all three colors produces white.) colors but other options indicate that you plan to print the publication through a commercial printing service. |
| Object has transparency |
This check looks for objects that have a transparent color applied to them. Objects with transparent colors print unpredictably to PostScript (PostScript: A page description language used by printers and imagesetters.) and PCL printers. |
| Low-resolution picture |
This check looks for pictures whose effective resolution is less than 96 dots per inch (dpi). This check assumes that you are printing to a high-resolution printer or imagesetter (imagesetter: A high resolution output device that prints to paper or film, or directly to a press plate. Publications that will be commercially printed are usually output from an imagesetter as the first step toward going to press.) that requires high-resolution pictures for best printing results. |
| Picture is missing |
This check looks for instances where a picture is a linked picture (linked picture: A picture that links to a high-resolution image file that is stored outside of the publication file. If the linked picture is changed in an image-editing program, you can update the linked picture in the publication file.) and the external linked file is missing or moved so that the link is broken. |
| Story with text in overflow area |
This check looks for any text box or AutoShape that contains part of a story (story: Text that's contained within a single text box or a chain of linked text boxes.) that is not visible because it is in overflow (overflow: Text that does not fit within a text box. The text is hidden until it can be flowed into a new text box, or until the text box it overflows is resized to include it.).
|
| Story on scratch area |
This check looks for instances in which a linked text box or AutoShape that contains part of a story is on the scratch area (scratch area: The area that surrounds a page in Publisher that is used to hold objects that are not currently on a page. Objects in the scratch area will not print and will not export as part of a Web page.).
|
Web site checks
E-mail checks
| Check |
Action performed |
| Object with text is partially off the page |
This check looks for any object that is partially off a publication page. |
| HTML fragment is partially off the page |
This check looks for any HTML code fragment that is partially off the page. |
| Object is overlapping text |
This check looks for any object that is on top of a text box. |
| Object with text is rotated |
This check looks for any object that contains text and has been rotated. |
| Shape with text has a hyperlink on the shape |
This check looks for any shape that has a hyperlink on top of it. |
| Text is vertical |
This check looks for any text box that contains
vertically rotated text. |
| Text is too big to fit in the frame |
This check looks for any text box in which the text is too big. |
| Text is in a non-web-ready font |
This check looks for text that is not formatted in
a Web-safe font. |
| Text is in a diagonal table cell |
This check looks for text that is located in a diagonal table cell. |
| Table borders are less than .75pt |
This check looks for instances in which a table has borders that are less than .75 point thick. |
| Text has hyphenation |
This check looks for any hyphens in the text. |
| Text box with borders has zero margins |
This check looks for any text box that has a margin that is set to zero. |
| Hyperlink links to another page in this document |
This check looks for instances in which a hyperlink on one Web page links to another page in a publication. |
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