The way your document looks can influence not only how carefully it's read, but even if it gets read at all. So whether you're putting together a job bid, creating a strategic report, submitting a proposal for funding, or presenting your business plan to investors, it makes sense to focus on appearance as well as content.

As experience has probably taught you, creating a professional-looking document that contains diagrams, pictures, or other graphics (such as the one below) can be a real challenge in a program like Microsoft Word, which is designed primarily to handle text.

That's where Microsoft Publisher can help. By taking advantage of the graphic handling capabilities and publication designs included in Publisher, you can create polished, professional documents in four basic steps:

1. Create the text of the document in Word.
2. Import the Word document into Publisher.
3. Add graphics to the Publisher publication.
4. Print the publication.

 Tip   If you are working with a Word document that already includes graphics, you can import the graphics along with the Word file. However, it is easiest to add the graphics to your document after you import the text into Publisher.

Create the text in Word

Publisher and Word are designed to work together. You can type all the text for a report, proposal, or other document in Word (as you usually do). Then, you can import the file into a pre-designed, professional-looking Publisher publication.

Guidelines for creating Word documents to import into Publisher

Import a Word document into a Publisher publication

Publisher includes more than two dozen professional-looking publication designs specifically set up for importing Word documents.

After you import, you can choose a color and font scheme for the publication, include a title page if you want, and choose other options for laying out and printing your publication with just the click of a mouse button.

To import a Word document into a Publisher publication

1. Start Publisher. In the New Publication task pane, under New from a design, click Publications for Print.

    Note   If you are using Publisher 2002, in the New Publication task pane, under Start from a design, click By Publication Type.

2. In the New Publication task pane, click Import Word Documents.

    Note   If you are using Publisher 2002, in the New Publication task pane, click Word Documents.

3. Under Word Documents in the right pane, click the design you want.

    Tip   If you using a design set to give all of your publications a consistent design, you can choose a Word document publication that matches that design set.

4. In the Import Word Document dialog box, locate the Word document you want to import, and then click OK.
5. In the task pane, click Color Schemes, and then click the color scheme you want to use.
6. In the task pane, click Font Schemes, and then click the font scheme you want to use.
7. In the task pane, under Publication Options (or Word Import Options), choose the type of printing, orientation, and the number of columns you want, and indicate whether or not you want to include a title page.

    Tip   Different pages can have different numbers of columns. Display a page, right-click the thumbnail for the number of columns you want, and then click Apply to the page.

8. Page through the publication to make sure everything looks the way you want, then save it.

 Tip   To change or reapply text styles in your publication, on the Format menu, click Styles and Formatting. In the publication, click inside a paragraph of text, and then, in the Styles and Formatting task pane on the left, click the style you want.

Add graphics to the publication

Every diagram, photograph, piece of clip art, or other graphic that you include in a Publisher publication is placed in a frame. You can move the frame to reposition the graphic, and drag the frame handles to change the graphic's size.

See the following tables to find out how to add graphics to your publication and how to work with the graphics after you add them.

How to add graphics to a publication

 Tip   You can also copy a graphic from the program where you created it, and then paste it directly into your Publisher publication. However, results may vary depending on the graphics program.

How to work with graphics in a publication

For more information about working with graphics, see Help in Publisher.

Tips on printing your publication

Now that your publication looks good on the screen, it's time to print a good-looking copy that you can distribute to your audience. Follow these tips to get the printed results you want:

• On the File menu, click Print Preview to see how your publication will look on the printed page. This way, you can make any necessary adjustments before (rather than after) you print.
• Because colors in a printed document can look different from colors on the screen, print a color sampler on the printer you expect to use to print your final publication.
  To print a color sampler, on the Format menu, click Color Schemes. In the Color Scheme task pane on the left side of the window, click Custom Color Scheme (at the bottom of the pane). Click the Standard tab, and then click Print color sampler.
• For even higher quality than you can get on your laser printer, you can prepare your publication to be printed by a commercial printer.