I mentioned the Content Library in Publisher yesterday.  This is a very useful feature of Publisher.  You can insert and design logos and other unique content for re-use in future publications.  This is how to make the most of it.

Open your content (images, text etc) or create it, select and then go to Insert-Add to Content Library.  You will be asked to name it and indicate categories (note that these are customisable).  Once in the library your content is available for all future publications.

From a different publication you can click on the Content Library icon on the left hand toolbar and a task pane will be opened for you.  You should see your content listed, but if you have a lot you can filter by category by clicking on the drop down next to category and choosing the one you want to see.  To insert an item into your publication simply click on the appropriate drop down and choose Insert and you will see a copy of it inserted into your publication.  Notice that you can delete the item here too.  The item is inserted as the correctly sized version, so it is worth getting this right before you save it in the first place.

This is also a useful tool for commonly used text in a publication.  By selecting the text and inserting it into the Content Library you can repeat the text over and over without retyping it.  Great eh?

In this post we will have a quick look at the Design Gallery in Publisher.  This is a great source of content resources without you having to start designing them from scratch.  For example it has some great flash signs and banners that are editable:

You will also find coupons, mastheads, calendars and a great wealth of useful content.  You can access the Gallery from the toolbar down the lefhand side of the screen or from Insert Menu-Insert Design Gallery Object.  Experiment with some of the objects you find.  If you insert a logo object into your document you can change the picture.  Just click on the picture so that it is selected, go to Insert-Picture, and choose the source of your image (e.g. clip art, file).  Search for it, and when you find the desired image click on Insert.  The old image should be replaced with the new.  If you want to use it in another publication you should save it into your Content Library.  Come back tomorrow to find out how!

I used MS Publisher for years without realising that you could turn off the automatic hyphenation in text boxes.  It was only when I was actually asked how to do it once that I made the effort to find out.  And this is what I discovered....

The default setting in Publisher is to hyphenate all new text boxes.  You can turn off the hyphenations of individual text boxes by going to Tools-Language and selecting Hyphenation.

In the dialogue box take the tick out of the box next to 'Automatically hyphenate this story' and the text in the box will be reset without hyphens.

To change the default settings in Publisher, go to Tools-Options and choose the Edit tab.  In the second section of the dialogue box is an option to turn off/on the automatic hyphenation.  If  you remove the tick from the box your stories will no longer be hyphenated unless you use the method above to manually reset hyphenation.