Product Description

Keeping in touch and communicating with customers is essential for any business. A complete business publishing and marketing materials solution Publisher 2003 can help you reach out to customers. With Publisher 2003 it's easier than ever to design create

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1884 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: 805529555327
• Released on: 2003-10-21
• Platforms: Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .57 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Office Publisher 2003 is a desktop publishing package, designed to enable non-professionals to put together publications that look good. Typical uses are for greetings cards, newsletters, advertisements, invitations and leaflets. Part of the Office 2003 family, Publisher 2003 shares a common look and feel with applications such as Word and Excel.

One of the best things in Office Publisher 2003 is its huge range of pre-built designs. There is a fantastic range, the quality is good, and you can apply one of numerous colour scheme or font schemes to add variety. Overall there is a reasonable chance your Publisher design will not be exactly the same as the one from your friend or colleague. Office Publisher 2003 also gives access to an extensive clip-art library, both on CD and online. That means you do not have to be artistic or have design skills, although if you are that way inclined you can start with a blank publication and create your own design. The interface is elegant and easy to use, and a powerful set of tools is on offer. The 2003 version resolves a long-standing Publisher problem, in that you can now justify multiple columns vertically as well as horizontally. There is also better support for commercial printing, including separations and composite CMYK Postscript output.

Office Publisher 2003 is a superb package, but it is best suited for short documents such as leaflets and advertisements, rather than long documents such as books and manuals. There's no support for indexes, cross-references or tables of contents. Office Publisher 2003 can also be used to create websites, sometimes with good results, but as a Web tool it's inflexible. Within its true target area though, Office Publisher 2003 is brilliant. --Tim Anderson

Manufacturer's Description
New Publication Task Pane
Use new categories from the New Publication task pane. Choose to start your design by publication type (for print, e-mail, or the Web), by a specific Design Set, or from a blank publication.
10 new Master Design Sets
Create a consistent look across business publications with new Master Design Sets, which are collections of templates that carry a consistent design theme across publications. Choose from 45 Master Design Sets in Publisher 2003

Improved Features
Enhanced support for the Web
Create a marketing Web site with new Web site wizards, built-in support for more than 20 new Web page types, enhanced navigation bar support, and other improved features. You can make changes easily by uploading incremental changes to a Web file. Or, create print publications, including brochures, newsletters, postcards, CD or DVD labels, and other publications.
Polish your publications
with an improved Design Checker, support for multiple master pages, tools to align baselines, and tools to control widows and orphans.
Enhanced commercial printing support
Take advantage of support for process color (CMYK) composite postscript printing and the improved Graphics Manager.
Create publications by merging
Automatically create a publication that merges pictures and text from a data source (like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access) using Catalog Merge to create publications ranging from a datasheet to a sophisticated catalog.
Develop marketing e-mail messages
Use the new e-mail wizard to create various types of marketing e-mail messages, such as newsletters and product or service announcements. Microsoft Publisher version 2002 limits which customers can view e-mail messages created by Publisher. In Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, customers can view messages using various e-mail and Web-based clients, including Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook Express 5.0 or later, Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and AOL mail.
Customize your publications
Create personal publications using an expanded collection of templates, including personal stationery sets and professionally designed greeting cards and invitations.
Increased control over your publications
Enjoy increased control over your publication with improved Layout Guides, Baseline Alignment and Baseline Guides, the Page Sorter, and support for multiple Master Pages.
Make the most your time
Increase your efficiency by publishing a single publication in multiple ways: Print it to your desktop printer; take it to a commercial printer; save it to the Web; and send a single page in an e-mail message or the entire publication as an attachment.
Increased Flexibility
Benefit from increased flexibility during the planning and layout phase. You can insert empty picture frames as placeholders before you've selected final imagery for your publication.
Expand your template collection
Expand your collection of content by downloading templates from Templates on Microsoft Office Online. Organize and access them in the Templates category of the New Publication task pane.
Quick Publication Options
Use the Quick Publication Options task pane to customize a publication. Choose color schemes, font schemes, layout options, and design, and then customize the publication with your own text and graphics.
Consistent Formatting
Paragraph-formatting consistency with Microsoft Office Word 2003, including indents and spacing, and line and paragraph breaks, includes new Bullets and Numbering Dialog, increased ability to search and replace text across stories and text boxes.
Share your files more easily
2003 is backward compatible so you can open Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 files in Microsoft Publisher 2002 and share your files more easily.

Customer Reviews

I'm not a Microsoft hater, but...
I really don't hate Microsoft. I work on Windows all the time. At work, I always use Office 2003. Excel is a wonderful tool (though OpenOffice Calc is just as good).

So when I say that Publisher is poor, I hope you realise I'm not your typical Bill Gates basher. But Microsoft have never really got it together with easy-to-use DTPs. Publisher is awkward and counter-intuitive.

Two alternative products are to be preferred. For those who want an easy package, with lots of pre-written templates, get Serif's PagePlus 11. It costs less than Publisher, and does a whole lot more.

An even better product - but you have to make all your own templates - is the open source Scribus.

I's great for doing simple things...
I use Publisher alot in my teaching as it is very simple to use by those new to PC's. Lots of templates to choose from if you want to do DTP "painting by numbers" and lot of familiar goodies like WordArt etc. It is even nice to use when starting with a blank page if all you want to do is produce simple posters, flyers etc.

However, try to do anything approaching serious DTP layout and Publisher is an awful pain. There is no layering to make it easy to work with overlaping images and only very basic tools for the creation of multi-page documents. In fact it does nothing that can't be done in Word with a little practice. Also, at £130 it is very expensive for such a basic application. My advice is check out other packages particulaly those from Serif (available from amazon)

Dont buy, look for something else
AFter taking a couple of hours to print a birthday card (and still not done successfully), I have had no end of problems from not printing in the right order, to not being able to select the right paper size in Publisher (can in printer dialog, but that messes up the printing). My only reconmnedation is look else where, if you could get Scribus for Windows I would reconmend this.