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Creating Business Cards
Help, I'm baffled!
I am relatively new to Word - I'm using Microsoft Office 2002 - but I know several other word processors and am pretty good at reading help screens to figure things out but I'm having problems with creating business cards in Word. Actually, what I'm trying to produce are about 30 membership cards for a club I belong to. I'm using Avery 8371 business cards. On each membership card, I want to put the name of the club, the club logo (which is a small JPEG image), the member name, the member number, and the dates for which the card is valid, something like this: ------------------------------------ Smallville Book Club club logo Joe Blow Member #2006-01 July 2006 - June 2007 ------------------------------------- Naturally, I want to use a variety of fonts and colours for the text on the card and everything should be nicely centered and so forth. The first problem is that I can't figure out how to do the design/layout for the individual cards! I started the Mail Merge wizard and chose a document type of labels (there was no option for business cards so lables seemed the closest alternative) in Step 1. In Step 2, I clicked on Label options and chose Avery 8371 labels. The main document window shows me a a page layout that resembles a grid of 5 rows by 2 columns, sized very much like the Avery 8371 cards. So far so good. Now, how do I design the contents of the cards? In other words, how do I: - put the "constants" on each card, namely the club name, the logo, and the membership period (July 2006 - June 2007) on the card? Ideally, I only want to put those in the design of the card once since they will be same on every card. (In a way, the membership period is actually a variable: next year, I'll want the cards to say "July 2007 - June 2008". I'm not sure how to accomplish that either.) - put the member names on each card? I assume this will involve doing a merge with a database of member names but I've never done this in Word. - increment the member numbers for each card? The member number is the 4-digit year, followed by a dash, followed by a two digit integer (01, 02, .... 09, 10, ... 30). That integer could be automatically generated but I'm not sure if Word can do that, let alone how it's done. - format the various bits of text appropriately, i.e. set the fonts, text color, alignment. I'm hoping it is possible to do these things in Word but I'm not finding it very intuitive so far and I'm having trouble coaxing the Help into telling me how to do these things. Your guidance would be greatly appreciated! -- Rhino |
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Creating Business Cards
Try the business card template you can download at
http://addbalance.com/word/download.htm. Business cards are labels in Word, which is to say the document is a table. It helps to display table gridlines. You may want to take a look at http://www.gmayor.com/graphics_on_labels.htm. Here is some general info on moving from Word Perfect to Word: Word and Word Perfect work very differently from one another. Each program's methods have strengths and weaknesses; but, if you try to use one of these programs as if it were the other, it is like pushing on a string! You can easily make a lot of extra work for yourself. In the (short) long term (weeks rather than years) spending the time to learn Word will save you time if you are spending any time at all (more than an hour a day) using Word. See http://www.addbalance.com/word/wordperfect.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...ordPerfect.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...AndGotchas.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RevealCodes.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...Converters.htm http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/conc...ion/index.html for information on Word for Word Perfect users. For mo http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Custom...platePart2.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Custom...platePart1.htm http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Number...gExplained.htm http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Custom...latesStore.htm Function Keys In Word 2000 (or later) You can get the function keys to display in a special toolbar at the bottom of the screen if you want (something like pressing F3 twice in WP). The following macro will do this. Sub ShowMeFunctionKeys() Commandbars("Function Key Display").Visible = True End Sub Word's Extend key (F8) gives something similar to block processing. Formatting and Styles Learn about Styles - really learn! http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm I resisted for years and now regret every day of those years because although that string was still very hard to push, it kept getting longer and longer, and had some very important projects tied to it! Once you understand styles and the Word concept of organizing things into Chinese boxes everything falls into place and instead of pushing a string, you can push a button that turns on the very powerful text processing machine known as Microsoft Word and it will start doing your work for you instead of running around behind you trying to undo what you just thought you did. Converting documents Word / Word Perfect Some special characters in Word Perfect documents don't convert well to Word. There is a macro to assist with this described at http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/...html#macroword and can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/WPSymbolConv.bas. This was prepared by Edward Mendelson. Otherwise, look at the macro from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=212396 Use these on _copies_! As for converting documents from Word Perfect to _use_ in Word... In a word, don't plan on it. I would not recommend using converted documents long-term. They will be filled with formatting anomolies that will get you at the worst time. This is especially true of any documents containing automatic numbering or bullets. Try recreating form documents in Word using the following process: In Word Perfect (if you still have it, in Word if not) save your files as text files. Use your converted files as references to show you how you want your formatting to look. Create a new document in Word and insert the text from the text file. Save this new document as a Word template. Format it the way you want using styles, not direct formatting. Save it again. To use a template within Word, use File = New and pick your template. This will create a new document for you. Merge documents have special problems and should be recreated from text files or retyped in Word. To convert data files, consider generating labels in WP as a document, converting that to Word, and then using http://www.gmayor.com/convert_labels...mail_merge.htm to get a new Word data file. Note that conversions usually do create documents that look passable and print OK; the problems I'm referring to have to do with editing / making changes, that is, using the documents long-term. (See below on reusing documents vs. using templates.) Conversion back to Word Perfect: There is a problem (in addition to the ones mentioned for conversion _to_ Word) with Version 2002 (XP) and later of Word. The conversion file only works for conversion _to_ Word, not from Word to Word Perfect! Earlier versions went both ways. To fix this, you need to find the old conversion file WPFT532.CNV from a Word 97 or Word 2000 installation and copy it to your new installation, replacing the file of the same name. Note, the change making the file one-way was done as a security measure. While I don't know of any problems the old file causes, keep the new installation's file somewhere as a backup just in case. Boilerplate and Forms In WP a lot of people use macros to hold chunks of text - boilerplate. In Word this function is filled by Templates, AutoText and AutoCorrect, not macros. Follow the links at http://addbalance.com/word/wordwebre...s.htm#AutoText for more information on these tools. You can use FILLIN and ASK fields or UserForms to query the user. For more about online forms, follow the links at http://addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#Forms or http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customizat...nTheBlanks.htm especially Dian Chapman's series of articles. You may also want to look at http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFl...nesInForms.htm. Letterhead How to set up letterhead or some other document where you want one header on the first page and a different header on other pages. http://www.addbalance.com/word/headersfooters.htm This gives step-by-step instructions. (It also has the following links) Some other pages to look at: Letterhead Tips and Instructions http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/Letterhead.htm Letterhead Textboxes and Styles tutorial http://addbalance.com/word/download....StylesTutorial (for simulating different margins on different pages, among other things) Reusing Documents vs. Using templates General practice in WP is to have a document and copy and edit it to create a new document. This is not good practice in Word. In Word, construct a good, tight, template for your documents and use that template when constructing new documents. Among other things, this can avoid embarrassing "metadata" (http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/metadata.htm) and things like surprise headers and footers from creeping into new documents. It's a lot of reading, I know. It's OK to chunk it down and do a bit each day, but I would recommend that you make it a top priority to do that bit each day. In the (short) long run, it will save you both time and grief. -- Charles Kenyon Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs which is awesome! My criminal law site: http://addbalance.com --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn from my ignorance and your wisdom. "Rhino" wrote in message ... Help, I'm baffled! I am relatively new to Word - I'm using Microsoft Office 2002 - but I know several other word processors and am pretty good at reading help screens to figure things out but I'm having problems with creating business cards in Word. Actually, what I'm trying to produce are about 30 membership cards for a club I belong to. I'm using Avery 8371 business cards. On each membership card, I want to put the name of the club, the club logo (which is a small JPEG image), the member name, the member number, and the dates for which the card is valid, something like this: ------------------------------------ Smallville Book Club club logo Joe Blow Member #2006-01 July 2006 - June 2007 ------------------------------------- Naturally, I want to use a variety of fonts and colours for the text on the card and everything should be nicely centered and so forth. The first problem is that I can't figure out how to do the design/layout for the individual cards! I started the Mail Merge wizard and chose a document type of labels (there was no option for business cards so lables seemed the closest alternative) in Step 1. In Step 2, I clicked on Label options and chose Avery 8371 labels. The main document window shows me a a page layout that resembles a grid of 5 rows by 2 columns, sized very much like the Avery 8371 cards. So far so good. Now, how do I design the contents of the cards? In other words, how do I: - put the "constants" on each card, namely the club name, the logo, and the membership period (July 2006 - June 2007) on the card? Ideally, I only want to put those in the design of the card once since they will be same on every card. (In a way, the membership period is actually a variable: next year, I'll want the cards to say "July 2007 - June 2008". I'm not sure how to accomplish that either.) - put the member names on each card? I assume this will involve doing a merge with a database of member names but I've never done this in Word. - increment the member numbers for each card? The member number is the 4-digit year, followed by a dash, followed by a two digit integer (01, 02, ... 09, 10, ... 30). That integer could be automatically generated but I'm not sure if Word can do that, let alone how it's done. - format the various bits of text appropriately, i.e. set the fonts, text color, alignment. I'm hoping it is possible to do these things in Word but I'm not finding it very intuitive so far and I'm having trouble coaxing the Help into telling me how to do these things. Your guidance would be greatly appreciated! -- Rhino |
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