Catalogue Dilemma

[Dazed-and-Confused]

I am in the early stages of a regular consumer catalogue production.
Our design company want us to use Quark (which we don't own, and its
expensive and cumbersome for catalogues) and eventually we want to put
the catalogue production in-house as it will be easier for proof
reading and control. So, the ideal situation would be to use Publisher
which we already own, and to produce high res CMYK PDF's which should
cost us much less!

Our data will be available from either our website as csv's, or from
our accounting and stock control package again, as csv or similar
format ready for import.

Now the dilema is that my design company and most of the printers I
spoke to are very Publisher-Shy so we won't have much help. I've had a
play with Catalog Merge and aside from a problem getting the images to
display, it worked fine.

My dilemma is - is Publisher really the right tool. I am fairly
new to it, but once I get started it should be OK. I am hoping,
because it's a consumer catalogue, not to have all the pages in a too
"uniform" format but the Catalog Merge will get me started with
getting the data in.

Has anyone else overcome this problem successfully and what was your
solution?

 

[Mary Sauer]

In step 5 of the catalogue merge you can convert the merge to a full publication.
This will allow you to adjust your objects and move things around, thus losing the
"uniform" look.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Dazed

MS Publisher is really aimed at the home user or organisations like scout
troops etc.. to make up publications for professional printing, your company
should be looking at taking it seriously and buying a serious program.. I
found this site that offers information on professional printing and
Publisher 2003..

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011243441033.aspx

Incidentally, Serif produce a program called PagePlus that they would have
you believe is a PageMaker look-a-like..

http://www.serif.com/

It is way cheaper than PageMaker, and is really quite good.. I have not used
the latest version, but kept up to version 6 before having to give up all
after a domestic upheaval..

 

[Dazed-and-Confused]

Dazed

MS Publisher is really aimed at the home user or organisations like scout
troops etc.. to make up publications for professional printing, your company
should be looking at taking it seriously and buying a serious program.. I
found this site that offers information on professional printing and
Publisher 2003..

Thanks for that link Mike. Most interesting. I guess it is a little
cumbersome to Postscript/PDF 48 pages! Our budget isn't large and the
bulk is going into the printing, so I am going to take a look at Page
Plus as you suggested but I am still considering Publisher.

One thought - the article you sent me supports Publisher 2003 which
supposedly handles Pantones and CMYK correctly. If anyone else HAS
used Publisher successfully for a regular catalogue please let me
know!

Thanks.

 

[Brian Kvalheim [MSFT MVP]]

Dazed-and-Confused wrote:
|| My dilemma is - is Publisher really the right tool. I am fairly
|| new to it, but once I get started it should be OK. I am hoping,
|| because it's a consumer catalogue, not to have all the pages in a too
|| "uniform" format but the Catalog Merge will get me started with
|| getting the data in.
||
|| Has anyone else overcome this problem successfully and what was your
|| solution?

Dazed,

Publisher is perfect for a project catalog like this. At least depending on
the complexity. As for the images and the catalog merge. Publisher doesn't
understand how to read a database with photo's. However, it does understand
how to read a database that has "paths" to photos. For example, if you had a
spreadsheet from Excel, and it contained the paths to your photo's, then it
would import those photos. Example, cell A1 would have C:\My
Pictures\bike.jpg.

--
Brian Kvalheim
Microsoft Publisher MVP
http://www.publishermvps.com

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.