Making Your Own Greeting Cards Using Microsoft Publisher
You can make your own Christmas (or other) greeting cards easily and inexpensively with Microsoft
Office Publisher, which is available on the Alcona Public Library public computers. You can use one of
many card designs and pictures that are included in Publisher or you can use your own picture and
greeting. There are also several choices of size and format.
Let’s assume that you want to make a Christmas card that includes a photograph of your family,
which you have already uploaded to a USB flash drive, and that you have inserted the flash drive into
the computer. Let’s also assume you want the card to be on a regular 8-1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper,
and you want to fold it in quarters to make a 4-1/4 x 5-1/2 inch card. Here are the steps:
1. Click start -> All Programs, then mouse over Microsoft
Office and choose Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 from
the list that appears. Or, from the black Library desktop,
just double-click Publisher to open it.
2. You will see some icons showing popular publication
types. Scroll down, if necessary, to find Greeting Cards
and click once to select it (or, you can find it in the list of
publication types at the left of the screen).
3. From the list of types of Greeting Cards at
the top center of the screen, select Holiday.
4. Scroll through the list to find a style you
like and click it to select. For example, let’s
choose Christmas 23, which shows a photograph
of some candles. (You can change the size, color
scheme and font scheme if you wish, but to keep
it simple let’s just use the default settings.) The default
size for this particular card is quarter-page side fold,
which is the style we want.
5. Click Create. The screen will look like this (below): You will see a picture of how the front of
the card will look (the blue outline is just a guideline – it won’t appear on the card).
Tip: At the bottom of the screen, you will see page
numbers 1-4, with page 1 highlighted in orange. Click
through each page to see what the entire card will look
like before you customize it. That way, you can go
back and choose another card if you don’t like the one
you’ve chosen.
NOTE: If you have chosen a card that does not contain a photograph, or if you don’t want to change
the candle photograph, you can skip the following steps 6-8. If you do want to use a photo of your
own, follow all steps below.
6. Right-click the photo of the candles and choose Change Picture -> From File…
7. You will be shown the Insert Picture screen. Assuming
you have a picture file on a flash drive, navigate to the
flash drive: select
My Computer,
then double-click
Removable disk
(E:). Then find and double-click your picture file.
8. If necessary, resize the picture to fit within the blue
guideline on the Publisher screen.
9. Click in the outside greeting space (in our example, the
greeting originally said, “Happy Holidays”), and change the
greeting if you wish. (In the sample, the greeting, the fill color, and the size of the box are
changed.)
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10. Click the number 2 on the small tab at the bottom of the screen to view the next page. Pages
2 and 3 will appear together. Change the text, if you wish, by clicking in each of the two text
boxes. (You can also change or delete the little icon that appears on page 2 if you want to,
which I did, in the example below.)
11. Click the tab for page 4, click in the blue text box, and replace the text with your own name.
(If you forget this step on a public computer at the Library, it will appear that “Alcona County
Library,” or possibly “Public” made the card!) You can change the color of the box as well, if you
want.
12. Save the card to your flash drive, if you haven’t
already done so.
NOTE: If you want to include a note or mini-newsletter that
could fit on a quarter of a page, you can remove the icon on
page 2, insert a text box to match the size of the blue
guidelines, and type your own text in the text box.
13. Before printing, do a Print Preview, (click File and select Print Preview). The Preview will
appear in black and white, and pages 2 and 4 will appear upside down due to the way the card
will be folded. (If necessary, you may also wish to do a
test print in black and white; it’s best not to print in
color until you are sure you have what you want, as
color copies are 50 cents/page on the Library
computers.)
14. Fold the printed card in half horizontally and then
vertically, and violà, you’re done!
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