Is Publisher the right choice? Forums?

[PubNews]

I've been tasked to construct a newsletter for my division. I've been told that other divisions are using MS Word, and that we don't have "tech support" or the software for Publisher. However, I might be able to obtain it.

In further discussions, I was advised that MS Word is just as capable and a more for professional newsletters than Publisher. This doesn't make sense to me. Is this true? Is it worth springing for the cost of Publisher if I'm going to be making newsletters? Or should I stick with Word? My real desire is to get Adobe Pagemaker, but it's about 4 times as expensive, and becomes intrusive on the budget.

Also, is this appears to be a good forum for Publisher specific questions. Are there other forums that are helpful for creating newsletters? I found two for Excel called mrexcel.com and excelforum.com that are very comprehensive. Anything similar for Publisher, Pagemaker, or newsletter creation?

Thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
PubNews.

 

[bayshore]

Publisher is ideal for newsletters, and is FAR more versatile when it comes to embedding art and graphics. Word is quirky with art and text boxes. Publisher is MADE for them. And it's much easier for the casual user to handle than Quark or PageMaker. It also makes a passable web-design tool for inexperienced users, although the HTML code that it produces is somethings loaded with cumbersome redundancies that are hard to edit in the raw..

 

[JerryGuinn]

Just my 2¢-worth, but if you have to choose one of the Office products to do your web design, it's sort of a trade-off. What I've found is that unless you dig deeper into the documentation, Publisher can be easier to do your design because of the "free-form" page layout. If you use it, though, be sure to not overlap on any item on the page. If any items are overlapped, they are converted to a table with additional coding causing an increase in your resulting .htm file size. It's easier to just stay away from overlapped items.

On the other hand, I have a colleague who uses Word for his page design, simply it easily offers Frames in the page construction.

Keep in mind, though, that any Office product that you use to create a web page will embed all the information necessary to reopen that page and edit it. This can cause a substantial increase in size to your HTML document.

 

[algraff]

I agree with Bayshore. Publisher is the way to go if you have a choice between it and Word for a newsletter. Work is a fine product, but as Bayshore noted, it can be a bit awkward with the way it handles graphics. Publisher makes it a lot easier to compose your pages and move stuff around until you're satisfied with their appearance. It takes some time to learn all the tricks, but it's a great program.
As JerryGuinn noted, you should avoid using Publisher to do web pages unless you absolutely have to use it. FrontPage is the way to go if you need stuff for the web...either that or print your stuff using Adobe Acrobat.

algraff :

 

[PubNews]

Thanks all. I appreciate the input. Looks like will have to go with Word for the mean time. Might have some interface problems with Publisher when I go to the print shop. But will have to do the best I can.

PubNews.