Microsoft Office Suite Tips

Microsoft Publisher V2 custom page size bug

There is a bug in custom page sizes making portrait and landscape pages the wrong way around. The workaround is as follows:

  1. Set up your user defined page in control panel and make your printer the default printer.
  2. Start MSP, go to Page Setup and do Print Setup and change the orientation from portrait to landscape or visa versa i.e. the opposite to what it says when you open Page Setup. Then press OK to finalise.
  3. From MSP do Page Setup again and change the orientation. This should toggle and now your preview should match the orientation shown. If not go back to step 2 and repeat the procedure.

Thanks to Duncan Birt and Microsoft for sorting out this workaround, we believe the next release of MSP will fix this.

Excel Line Weights

If you are using Excel graphics in a publication make sure the graphics are not drawn using the finest line weight available in Excel as they reproduce on the imagesetter as hairlines which are unprintable. The next weight up is fairly heavy, about a one point line, but at least you can print it! We have no workaround for this.

Microsoft Publisher and Tints

MSP users can get grey tints in objects by selecting the right colours (The fill patterns from publisher produce terrible tints for printing).

Yellow gives a 10%, Silver 20%, Aqua 30%, Lime 40%, Fuchsia 50% and Red 60%.

Getting Rid of Useful Tips

Once you know your way around Microsoft Publisher (and other Microsoft products) you may find the "Useful Tips" are more annoying than useful. To switch them off go to the Tools pulldown menu and select Options...Click on the View More Options button. Near the bottom under Reminders and Quick Demos click on Activate to remove the cross.

MS Publisher - Saving

If you forget to save your work regularly, and use MS Publisher, you can set it up to automagically remind you.

Just go to the Tools menu and select Options... and select the Remind to Save Publications box. You can select how often you want to be nagged (default is 15 minutes), and it will pop up a box reminding you to save if you haven't).

MS Publisher Tints and Patterns If you are using Microsoft Publisher version 2 (the version for Windows 3.11) then there are a few problems that occur with tints or patterns. When adding shades or tints to boxes or objects in your job there is only one way to do so and get what you are expecting on bromides or negatives.

Set the pattern in the fills box to black, and choose one of the colours below that relates to the tint you want:

10% - Yellow
20% - Silver
30% - Green

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