MS Publisher: Catalogues

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Publisher has a number of templates for catalogues (American spelling is catalogs). To open an existing catalogue choose New and click once on 'Publications for Print'. Choose 'Catalogs' from the list and choose one of the existing templates.

When you open a catalogue template you should get a display of 'Personal Information' - some of this has been incorporated into the publication. If you don't see the Personal Information, or if you want to change it later, choose Edit/Personal Information. You can insert information into a publication by choosing Insert/Personal Information and choosing the item.

Some items of personal information have been placed in the header areas of the screen.

The catalogue templates contain the following:

• a cover (pages 1 and 8)
• a blank inside page for your own use
• a table of contents (unlike Word, Publisher does not have an automatic Table of Contents facility)
• a page of descriptions
• a lead page ("attention grabber")
• two pages of catalogue items

Close the templates when you have seen their features.

Merged Catalogues

Rather than create catalogues from scratch and edit them by hand every time an item is added, changed or deleted, a better approach is to put the basic information in a database and merge it into a catalogue publication each time a new edition is required.

This is a two-stage process:

1. create the catalogue (a database)

2. create the merge template (in Publisher)

Create the Catalogue

We will not use a template catalogue but will set up our own design.

In Publisher select File/New and then click on 'Blank Print Publication'. Scroll down the list to the Booklets section and choose A4 booklet (it's a landscape picture). You will get a message asking if you want to scale it to 4 pages: click Yes.

(You can also do this through File/Page Setup).

Use Arrange/Layout Guides to set the left, right, top and bottom margins to 1cm.

Set up a suitable title page using text and images.

Use the second page for an introduction and a list of the contents of the booklet. Use the rest of the inside pages for your catalogue, set up according to the following guide to the merge template.

Save this publication as 'catalogue' in the folder you created for this project. Close this document before proceeding to the merge template.

Create the Merge Template

1. Create a new one-page Publisher document.
2. Set up the page size required for the catalogue as A5 (the same as the catalogue you just saved). Set the publication type to 'Full Page' in Page Setup.
3. Set all margins to 1 cm (Arrange/Layout Guides).
4. Save the new document as 'catalogue_merge_template'.
5. Choose Tools/Mail and Catalogue Merge/Wizard and choose Catalogue Merge from the two options available (do the same if opening an existing catalogue merge document)
6. Set the number of rows and columns to 1 (the whole page).
7. Select the data source, typically an Access database file (you should have set this up in the folder for the project).
8. Place the fields one by one onto the template. This is a little tricky at first. Remember to de-select each field before bringing on another on, otherwise the second goes inside the first (useful if you want to merge fields e.g. first and second names). Size and shape each field and place it roughly where you want it before going on to the next one.

9. For the picture field click on 'Product Picture' and choose the picture field from the list.
10. Click 'Create merged publication'

11. Complete the merge - choose 'Add to an existing publication' and select the catalogue you created earlier. Or choose Merge to a new publication. Publisher will add the extra pages to the booklet.
12. Add extra pages or remove surplus ones so that the total number divides by 4. Use any blank pages still in the booklet to provide further information about the books and the subject.

Save the finished catalogue and the merge template.

12. The catalogue will now have extra pages resulting from the merge process. The number of pages should match that required for a particular publication e.g. an A5 booklet should have a number that divides by 4. Scan through the pages and either delete or insert pages to bring the total to a multiple of 4:

• if 7 or 11 insert a single page;
• if 9 or 21 then find an unused page and delete it;
• if 6 or 18 or 22 then either add two empty pages, e.g. at the end, or delete 2 pages if you can spare them.

You may find that the pictures are of different sizes and there is nothing you can do to prevent distortion of some images as they do not match the standard size set in the template. To improve this situation you could use an image editor to crop and scale the images to the same dimensions.

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